Instead of the standard full-length rifles, his bodyguards carried newer carbine versions of the M-16, with short barrels and collapsing stocks. The bodyguards all wore khaki-colored combat vests over their brown t-shirts, with pouches and compartments for extra M-16 magazines. Each of them had a black drop-leg tactical holster strapped to his right thigh for a pistol. They wore the brown beret with the same silver falcon as their leader, woodland camouflage utility pants and a variety of boots. They had the self-assured, almost cocky demeanor of serious operators.
These bodyguards seemed fitter and more alert than the Milicianos she had seen at the Chulada roadblock, or in today’s firing squad. Elite troops. The Falcon Battalion, he had called them. Ranya thought that if this personal detachment accompanied their leader everywhere, it would be extremely difficult to escape from them. Two of them had intricate blue prison tattoos on their bare arms and up their necks, but unlike some of the ordinary Milicianos, not on their faces. Several of the tattoos depicted machetes dripping with blood. From the accompanying tattooed Germanic calligraphy, this machete logo seemed to be one of the signatures of the MS-13 pandilla, or gang faction.
The chain link gate rolled open, and the SUV pulled out of the complex and onto a wide street. It looked like an area zoned for light industrial and commercial use. She could see the Sandia Mountains on their right side, to the east. A second black Suburban was waiting outside, and fell into line behind them.
“Whew! I’m glad to be out of that shit hole,” said the young officer. “Pardon me…that dump. That place makes me nervous—it’s too much like a prison, with that cement wall around it.”
“It was a prison, for me,” said Ranya.
“Well, yes, and I’m glad we got that straightened out. Anyway, let us begin again. I’m called Basilio Antauro Ramos. Or if you prefer, you may simply call me Basilio, and I’ll call you Ranya…if that is all right with you.” He extended his hand, and she accepted it politely. His grip was firm and smooth, his fingernails were well manicured, and he was wearing a gold Rolex watch.
“It’s fine with me…Basilio.” She knew instinctively that escaping would depend on befriending this Basilio Ramos, and gaining his trust. She was glad to be traveling with him rather than with Carlos, the bearded Jefe. Ramos was more refined, he seemed better educated, and of a higher class. And of course he was younger, in his mid or late thirties she guessed, and much, much better looking.
“Excellent. Now, first, you must be starving. We’ll stop somewhere right away and get you something to eat, and then I was thinking that perhaps you would not mind too much a change of clothing? And a chance to wash up?”
“As you wish…Basilio. Yes, that would be very generous of you.”
“And this afternoon, we can begin to inspect the rifles.”
“As you wish.”
“Oh, we have your pack,” said Ramos. Without being specifically asked, one of his bodyguards in the back passed over the brown backpack, which had begun its odyssey in Starr Linssen’s house in Oklahoma. “Camarada Inez, she kept the Glock pistol. But everything else of yours is in here.”
Ranya accepted the bag casually and placed it on the seat between them. After her night in the cement cell, unfed and sleepless, she was exhausted. Then after the firing squad experience, her nerves were badly shaken, but she was pleased to be moving again. Any place had to be better than that secret prison in the mini-storage facility.
***
The Suburban had a color GPS display in the center of the instrument panel, and from the middle seat, Ranya could see that they were northbound. She saw from street signs above intersections that they were on Tramway Boulevard. From her map study back in Caylen Barlow’s ranch house in Texas, Ranya had the general layout of Albuquerque memorized. The city roughly resembled a square, with the lazy Rio Grande forming the outward-curving left side. The famous Route 66 was the bottom of the square, with downtown in the lower left corner. The University of New Mexico was east of downtown along Route 66, which was called Central Avenue in the city. The right side of the square was defined by Tramway Boulevard, which ran due north for ten miles along the base of the Sandia Mountains, and then turned westward to form the top of the box defining Albuquerque. Interstate 40 crossed the city from east to west, just above Route 66, and Interstate 25 bisected the city from north to south. Seeing the GPS map display, and matching it to her memory and to her current observations, encouraged her with a welcome sense of orientation.
Tramway Boulevard was also State Road 556, a number that echoed the caliber of the bullets she had fired at Kalil: 5.56mm. Before arriving in Albuquerque, this number had already been planted in her mind, from her map reading at Barlow’s ranch. This was because Tramway Boulevard— 556—was the primary route leading to her son. Alexandro Garabanda, his wife, and their “adopted” son lived in the Glenwood Hills subdivision, on the east side of Tramway, above the east-west running Montgomery Boulevard. She studied the neighborhoods as they drove north. There was a dry streambed and a bike path along the right side of Tramway. Beyond this path were comfortable suburban neighborhoods, in the predominant Southwestern architectural styles, mostly stucco boxes and faux-adobes in beiges, tans and corals, topped with red Spanish tiles. The streets rose uphill on the east side of Tramway, and after only a few blocks, the rocky high-desert foothills of the Sandia Mountains loomed above them all.
Ranya had never been to Albuquerque before, never been to New Mexico at all, yet it seemed to be a town in serious decline. Many of the stores in the strip shopping centers were closed, out of business, boarded up or even burned out. The potholes they were driving across were the worst she had ever seen in any American city. Many of the traffic signals at intersections were only flashing red, or they were entirely unlit. It was obvious that the local economy was suffering. The gas stations they passed had signs that all read the same price for a single grade of gasoline: $26.95 per gallon. This was cheaper than she had seen in Texas, but there was a difference. Here, the gas stations also had crude hand-written signs that read, “No Gas.” Unoccupied cars were parked in long lines leading to the pumps, waiting for the next gasoline delivery, she presumed. She decided to hazard an ‘innocent question.’
“Why are they out of gasoline? Is there no gasoline in this city?”
Ramos appeared pained. “Ay…la gasolina. It’s very complicated, I’m afraid. Not so much comes in from Texas, anymore. La economía…es terrible. There is a problem with credit, with payment for gasoline to be delivered. Anyway, don’t worry. We get enough for the Milicia.”
After ten minutes of traveling north, she saw the sign above the intersection with Montgomery, but as the Suburban rolled through on the flashing red light, she could not see beyond the first residential streets. She could not see 4875 Camino Del Cielo NE, where even now her son might be innocently running and playing in the yard. Or would “Brian Garabanda” be in day care on a Tuesday morning? She didn’t know if his bogus mother worked or stayed home.
Ranya’s heart pounded faster and faster as she possibly came within scant blocks of him, but the trucks continued driving steadily north. At least she had seen the actual approaches to his neighborhood with her own eyes. Finally, she knew the reality, instead of the merely imagined. She was so very close, she had taken the lay of the land and she would return, as soon as she possibly could.
A few minutes later, the black Suburban turned left at the light on Academy Road. “Something to eat” was a foot-long tuna sub, devoured in record time and washed down with a tall lemonade. A “change of clothing” turned out to be a whirlwind shopping spree in a medium-sized mall. Basilio Ramos and his entourage of heavily armed bodyguards swept into ladies’ garment boutiques, athletic stores, and outdoor outfitters, and they simply took what she wanted.
They bypassed the cash registers without a backward glance, or a single challenging look from the cowering store personnel. The mall rent-a-cops actually came to sloppy positions of attention as th
e group passed by. Basilio Ramos’s bodyguards not only wore the brown beret with the silver pin of the elite Falcon Battalion, they had the tattoos of the toughest of the hard core of criminal gangs: the MS-13 and the Mexican Mafia. This deadly combination of official Milicia sanction and evidence of a partnership with the gangs instilled paralyzing fear in all who saw them.
For Ranya, a “chance to wash up” involved their group sweeping into a women’s health salon in the same mall. The uniformed female staff was idle; she was their only customer. The bodyguards checked out the sauna area, and stationed themselves outside of each exit while Ranya showered. After finishing, a spa staff member handed her a white terry-cloth robe to wear, while the Spanish-speaking hair stylists went to work. They began by showing her various pictures in fashion magazines, and discussed how they could best “save” her hair. Ranya decided on a tapered and layered pageboy cut, which would keep the hair out of her eyes and for the most part off her face. She also decided to return her hair tint to its natural brunette shade, so that it would not change colors from the current black as it grew out.
While the hair color was setting, she received a manicure and a pedicure, reclining in the padded leather salon chair with her eyes closed. The ambient room temperature was ideal, and soft music was playing to make the experience even more pleasurable. After five years of twice-weekly group showers, it was heavenly, and she was in no hurry to leave.
Finally she was finished and she changed into a new outfit, which she thought was suitable for the task of sorting through over a thousand rifles. She wore green slacks and a loose khaki short-sleeve shirt from an outdoor store, both of which had extra pockets patterned after those on military fatigues. For footwear, she had picked ankle-height brown and black cross trainers. If she saw an opportunity to escape, she wanted to be able to run far and fast. Importantly, the shoes had none of the usual reflectors sewn in, reflectors which would betray her at night.
She had selected a brown leather fanny pack for her “purse.” She wanted the bodyguards to grow used to seeing her wear it, so that if she was able to obtain a pistol, she might carry it without their knowledge. If she was presented with a fleeting chance at escape, the element of surprise might mean the difference between success and failure, when she unexpectedly drew a gun and fired.
On the way out of the women’s spa, she heard Basilio Ramos advise one of the Latina staff to be sure that they changed all of their signs completely to Español, by Saturday at the very latest. Ramos helped to carry her shopping bags, while the bodyguards maintained their loose square around them, with their eyes searching, and their weapons held ready. When they walked out of the mall’s side exit, the black Suburbans were waiting at the curb with their engines running.
***
“Oh—hey Alex, I’m glad I caught you. Got a minute?” The female Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Albuquerque Field Office was standing in the doorway of her office. The diminutive woman was talking to a male agent when Supervisory Special Agent Garabanda passed by, on the way back to his office with a stack of file folders. She looked like a librarian rather than a federal officer, in her unfashionable black pants suit, with her dark hair pulled back in a tight bun.
“Sure, what’s up?” Garabanda was wearing a light blue dress shirt and navy slacks. His pistol was visible on his right hip.
“Harry, get back to me on that after lunch,” said the ASAC, curtly dismissing the agent with whom she had been talking. “Come on inside, Alex.” She shut the glass door behind them, twisting the louvered blinds closed. “Have a seat, please.”
Frederica Chupatintas was five years younger and almost a head shorter than Alex Garabanda, but she was still his superior in the federal law enforcement hierarchy. This was par for the course in the FBI, where the vast majority of Special Agents remained at the grade of GS-13 for most of their careers, while a select few—the anointed—shot rapidly up the ladder of success. It was widely believed that Ms. Chupatintas had been deep-selected for early promotion during her days at the Academy in Quantico. She was of the “under represented” gender, and a member of a preferred ethnic group, as well as a native speaker of Spanish. Like most of the women in the FBI’s management track, she was single, ‘married to the Bureau,’ with no husband or children to distract her from her duty. It was not hard to understand why she had remained unmarried: behind her back her nickname was “toothpick.”
She slid behind her desk and Garabanda sat in one of the gray government chairs against her ‘me wall,’ with its obligatory plaques and pictures of herself in the company of the high and the mighty. Her position behind her desk normally gave her a view through a glass wall and door out onto the bullpen—cubicle city—but for this meeting all of her blinds were closed. Garabanda, on the other hand, could look past her, out of her Federal Building window and across Central Avenue toward the Central Plaza and the County Courthouse, the scene of his latest marital defeat.
“Any new information on the radio towers?” she asked.
“We’re working it, but it’s not easy. As you know, there were over a million scoped hunting rifles in New Mexico before the sniper rifle ban went into effect, and it’s safe to assume most of them are still out there. We’ve done a time and distance analysis, and we know that there are a minimum of ten active tower shooters across the state, but there could be more. Maybe a lot more—ten is the minimum. We have some leads, but nothing that’s actionable yet. So far they’re just generic tips like, ‘my brother-in-law still has some rifles with scopes on them.’ If we followed up on all of those leads, we’d have to investigate about half of the state, as I’m sure you can understand.”
“Well, sabotaging interstate communications makes those sniper rifles a serious federal matter. I have to tell you Alex, we’re looking weak, awfully weak. Can’t you set up a sting or something? Put some cell towers under observation?”
“Frederica, there are thousands of exposed communications towers in this state. Thousands, and I only have nine agents in my squad.”
“We’re all understaffed Alex—we have to do the best we can with the resources that are available. Face it, New Mexico isn’t exactly Headquarters’s top priority.”
“Well, I don’t think it would be a good use of our manpower. Why don’t you call Santa Fe, and ask the State Police and Milicia to look into it?”
“Oh my God, don’t bring them up. After what happened to that bus yesterday morning…Jesus, what a disaster for the Milicia! At least it’s not a federal crime—thank God—and so far, Santa Fe hasn’t asked us for assistance. It’s a big body count, but it’s not federal. Interstate communications, now that’s another matter. That’s us.”
“Well,” said Garabanda, “It’s Santa Fe’s fault if the cell towers are getting shot up, after they fired half of the law enforcement officers in New Mexico. What did they expect would happen, nothing?”
She paused, and looked at him quizzically. “Alex, do you actually believe former law officers could be doing some of the sabotage? Are you talking about the ‘FLA’?”
“I’m not even convinced that the ‘FLA’ really exists,” he answered. “Graffiti and a few internet messages don’t necessarily mean there’s an actual ‘Former Lawman’s Association.’ So far it sounds more like some people are playing head games with us.”
“Well, somebody’s sure taking out the radio towers—and that’s not a head game, that’s damned serious! It’s affecting business, with all the dropped calls and the erratic internet service, and I don’t need to tell you how it’s degrading law enforcement operations.”
Garabanda responded, “Did they really think that they could just fire all of the Anglo cops, and not get blowback? That just because Idaho and Wyoming passed ‘English only,’ they’d be able to tell every Anglo from Carlsbad to Four Corners to change their signs to Spanish? What the hell were they thinking, up there in Santa Fe?”
“That’s not for us to judge, one way or the other. The Go
vernor…”
“Don’t you mean ‘el Gobernador’?”
“Don’t be a wise-ass, Garabanda,” she snapped back at his attempt at humor. “The Asamblea Legislativa was duly elected by the people, and their state language laws are their business.”
“Just like the Land Reform Act?”
“You’ve got to lose the bad attitude, Alex. You need to respect New Mexico law.”
“Or what? Headquarters will banish me to Albuquerque?”
“Very funny. You know perfectly well that transfers are a part of every FBI career. You’re just bitter about being transferred from Washington, and out of Foreign Counterintelligence.”
“Me? Bitter?” he replied. “But speaking of Foreign Counterintelligence, while you’ve got me in here, I thought I’d mention that we’ve been seeing some interesting faces around town. And some of them are even in Milicia uniforms…like this man.” Garabanda opened a folder and slid a large color photograph across her desk.
“So who is this bearded gentleman?” she asked, slipping on reading glasses.
“In past lives he’s gone by too many aliases to list. We’re reasonably certain his real name is Carlos Baza Guzman. Fifty-two years old. He’s Peruvian, we’re pretty sure. He sometimes goes by the nom’d’guerre of El Condor. Cut his teeth with the Sendero Luminoso in Peru, and when that played out, he moved in with the FARC in Colombia. He’s basically a guerrilla advisor for hire, but he’s ideologically motivated. Trained in Cuba and the former Soviet Union as a young man. Graduated from Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. He’s left a back-trail through Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico—anywhere the neocommunists are fighting for power. Now he’s right here in Albuquerque, wearing a Milicia brown beret.”
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista Page 16