***
After half an hour, the Milicianos cleared a path through the crowds. An ambulance with its lights flashing backed in toward the stage area from Marquette Avenue. Most of the demonstrators had gradually dispersed from the Civic Plaza, leaving a carpet of abandoned signs and banners and trash in their wake. The diehards converged on the vicinity around the stage, not willing to leave while Agustín Deleon’s blanket-covered corpse still lay where he had fallen. The back stage area all around the ambulance was a tightly packed mass of anger, grief, confusion and despair, with people crying, screaming, clinging to one another and swearing blood oaths of revenge.
Luis Carvahal followed Deleon’s body as it was carried from the stage on a gurney, traveling the last yards with him. Félix Magón and the other VIPs had already departed in swarms of SUVs. Milicianos in brown t-shirts and berets tried to clear a path in front of the ambulance out to Marquette Street, firing shots into the air from their M-16s. This rifle fire sent the panicked crowds diving to the ground for cover, and again stranded the ambulance in a sea of bodies. With kicks and curses and shouts, and help from someone’s amplified voice over the PA system imploring the crowd to make an opening for the ambulance, the vehicle was at last freed to move forward. Once out of the grip of the mob it quickly disappeared across Marquette Avenue, up Third Street past the police headquarters.
There was nothing left for the old reporter to do now but to go home, to reflect, and to write the final pages of the biography of Agustín Deleon.
The last groups of protestors who had spent an hour jammed tightly into the Civic Plaza began to leave. Only the area near the stage was still crowded with the most ardent true believers, clinging to the fresh history they had just witnessed, unwilling to let it go. Some still appeared shocked, but many more were furious, swearing to kill the gringo bastards who had assassinated Gobernador Deleon!
He wound his way through the milling crowd to where his old mountain bike was chained to a small tree, and unlocked it by twisting the three wheels of his combination to the correct numbers. The tree was in the grassy area between the side of the stage and the county government building. As he was pulling his cable lock free, he heard someone call his name, from behind him.
“Carvahal!”
He began to turn, and halfway around he was knocked senseless by a blow across his face from an iron bar. His eyes exploded with white light, he felt the skin over his left cheek split. He staggered, and would have collapsed if two men had not seized him by his arms and supported him. The world tilted and dropped from under his feet, as his field of vision began to shrink into a hazy circle surrounded by blackness. The two men who held him up by the arms kicked his bicycle away and roughly shoved him back against the tree. He had the momentary idiotic thought that they were going to extreme measures to steal his bike!
Another man, who was wearing a black bandana across his face, took the cable bicycle lock and swiftly wrapped it several times around both his neck and the slender tree and snapped the ends together. The plastic-covered steel cable was tight against his throat, forcing him to choke and gasp, still stunned, and still reeling from the blow across his cheek.
The men on his shoulders released their grasp and stepped away. Carvahal, his knees rubbery, sagged against the steel ring binding his neck. He pulled at it with his fingers under his chin, as he struggled to stand up on his weak legs, trying to relieve the suffocating pressure on his throat. Then another black-masked stranger loomed in front of him, improbably holding a huge white bucket.
The man snarled, “You want some free gasoline, you Jew bastard? The price of your soul is a few gallons of gasoline? Well then, here it is! Have all the gas you want, traitor!”
With that, he dumped several gallons of a reeking liquid over Luis Carvahal’s head and body, and one more incredible shock piled upon the others which had hammered him since the bullet had struck Agustín Deleon less than an hour before.
***
Five stories above, Alex Garabanda watched the doors of the ambulance close after the rolling gurney was slid into the back. Deleon’s body was strapped down, zipped into a white body bag or perhaps wrapped in a sheet, he couldn’t tell. He briefly caught sight of Luis Carvahal, recognizing him by his curly gray hair; he was standing near the back of the ambulance. Garabanda lost him in the swirl of the agitated mob, as the ambulance tried to inch forward. Then the crowd all around the stage hit the ground, as Milicia troops fired rifle shots into the air to clear an open path ahead of the ambulance.
At last, the ambulance moved forward, driving across Marquette. He continued scanning the crowd, and in a minute he found Carvahal again, but this time he was surrounded by masked men, who were pushing him back against a sapling tree. The tree, an Aspen perhaps, was topped by a crown of green leaves almost resembling a large bush, but its foliage was high enough above the ground not to impede Alex Garabanda’s view.
A group of masked men seemed to be working Luis over, mugging him. Then the gang stepped back away from him, and Luis appeared to be tied or attached to the tree, facing obliquely toward Alex Garabanda’s observation post. The front of his pale shirt was covered in blood, and Luis seemed to be clutching at his throat with both hands. It was hard to see what was happening in the mob, but then a larger space suddenly cleared around Luis, the crowd melted further back seemingly almost in concert, and somebody else wearing a black mask inexplicably threw a container of liquid on him. What the hell was going on? None of it made any sense!
***
Ranya was behind the stage when the ambulance left, trying to make her way toward Basilio in the crowd. She had seen him with the Jefe, standing with other Milicia officers near a line of dark SUVs on the avenue behind the stage, but then she lost sight of him, pushed along by colliding eddies of moving humanity. When she saw him again, he was on the side of the stage near a little tree, where there seemed to be some fresh commotion brewing.
She forced her way against a current of people until she was also at the edge of the mob, where she could cut through some small open spaces and get over to Basilio. She needed to link up with him—he was her ride back to his villa. She had not seen her two comrades from the march since before the speeches and then the assassination, when everything went crazy. She could have easily disappeared into the crowd and escaped amidst the confusion, but she decided to stick to her plan, and escape from his house later, fully equipped and prepared.
As she pushed between more men and reached another open space, she noticed there was a circle of protestors standing around the small tree, which was topped with shimmering green leaves. A gray-haired fellow in a bloody shirt was tied by his neck to the tree, writhing and groaning.
Suddenly a man with a five-gallon plastic bucket appeared, and doused the man with liquid. The man with the bucket was wearing a black mask like a cowboy movie bandit. The scene was so bizarre that it struck Ranya as surreal, almost Dali-esque, until she made the connection between the black mask and the bandanas given to the Falcons, including the one that she herself had shoved into her fanny pack…
Someone spat out, “You like gasoline, Jew? Here, take your gasoline!” A moment later, a lit cigarette or a match was tossed and there was an audible whoomp sound. Instantly the man on the tree was alight. In seconds he was on fire from his legs to his hair, yet he was fully conscious, his face clearly visible behind the orange corona of flame. He screamed and shrieked, swinging his arms and kicking his legs to no effect, his mouth and eyes impossibly wide open, his face a mask of sheer horror.
Instead of burning out as the gasoline was consumed, the fire only intensified, but the new fuel was the flesh of the man himself. Before Ranya’s eyes, he became a human torch: bubbling, screaming, and turning brown. It was obvious that the man was still all-too aware of his mortal predicament, and feeling the blazing heat with every nerve ending.
The leaves of the tree above him browned and then suddenly ignited in a flash, creating an instant updraft a
nd intensifying the fire, which was literally consuming the burning man. The smell of cooking flesh was unexpectedly horrible, beyond sickening. The smell was in its way as terrible as his agonized shrieking, and the sound of his crackling skin.
After several minutes, the man’s screaming died down to a keening wail from somewhere deep within him. His lips had burned off revealing teeth frozen in a scream, as his blackened limbs curled and twisted, his entire body still alight, and still held by his neck to the burning tree. His bicycle had been kicked to the ground beside him, and it had also been splashed with gasoline. Its tires had ignited along with the man and the tree, adding the smell of burnt rubber to the nauseating potpourri of death.
Ranya wept openly, involuntarily, remembering another Saturday morning almost six years before, when she had seen her own father, newly dead. When she had found him, his body had been burned…and now she had witnessed the entire horrifying process first hand, and at close range. The sight and the smell sent her back to that Saturday morning in Virginia...when her entire life had been turned upside down and ripped apart, never to right itself again.
***
Basilio Ramos would have enjoyed an even closer view of Carvahal’s well-deserved immolation. In fact, he would have enjoyed throwing the first lit match himself, but he was in uniform and was all too aware of the ability of a random camera lens to make unwanted and indelible linkages. As planned, Carvahal was locked to the tree that had secured his pathetic bicycle, and then he was doused with gasoline and set afire. It was quite satisfying to see the traitorous Jew bastard suffer, but by the end even Ramos’s feelings were just a little bit touched, imagining Carvahal’s inconceivable pain and agonizing death.
Nevertheless, it was important to remain strong, and maintain a coldly impassionate heart, like that of his revolutionary guide and spiritual mentor, Che Guevara. El Che had not flinched from his duty, not even when sending the Cuban people’s class enemies to their deaths before the firing squads. El Che had understood what needed to be done, and he always did it, without pity, without remorse.
Today in New Mexico, as before in Cuba, it was critically important that the enemies of the revolution be ruthlessly crushed. They needed to serve as clear illustrations, in order to dissuade the ideologically weak from betraying the cause of social justice during its fragile and vulnerable infancy. The New Mexican revolution was now entering the consolidation phase, when cruel examples became most necessary. Traitors and potential traitors had to be rooted out and mercilessly executed, before they could even think of organizing a counter-revolution. In their deaths, the traitors could at least serve as examples to the living.
Che had shown the way in Cuba, back in ‘59 and ‘60, sending thousands of possible enemies of the revolution to the firing squads. It was Che’s firm conviction that it was necessary to execute class enemies en masse, in order to terrorize the rest into rapid submission. This was a necessary step to guarantee the permanence of the revolution, when half measures would only put the revolution at risk. It was Che’s dictum that it was better to execute one hundred innocent men, than to allow one clever traitor to live to challenge the revolution. In the furtherance of the glorious cause of promoting social justice, the ends always justified the means.
A generation later in South Africa, Winnie Mandela had updated the method of execution for greater public impact. At her orders, her followers had introduced the gasoline-filled automobile tire “necklace” to the world, punishing suspected collaborators with the most agonizing death imaginable. However, it was Basilio Ramos’s own proud contribution to reintroduce the old Spanish tradition of burning heretics and traitors at the stake. Unlike those who died in the burning embrace of the gasoline-soaked tire, Carvahal had not collapsed to the ground in an unrecognizable blackened heap, out of sight. He had remained upright and visible to the very end, chained by his neck to the little Aspen tree.
The way Comandante Ramos understood things, this was much more than simply a matter of revolutionary justice for one traitor. Today this traitor Carvahal had received his punishment within full view of the Albuquerque Police Department headquarters building across Avenida Marquette. Any gusanos hiding themselves within the police department would now understand the stakes they were playing for, if they continued to support the counter-revolutionary elements. The message conveyed by the public execution would be very clear to the police: do not interfere in Milicia or other state security operations.
Comandante Ramos was certain that the APD would not so much as open a notepad to investigate Carvahal’s immolation, any more than they would investigate the hundreds of smashed windows and scores of wrecked and burned cars up and down Central Avenue. During the economic chaos that often accompanied a social revolution, public civil servants were among that lucky segment of the population with a guaranteed paycheck. This always meant that the police, eager to keep their jobs, could be depended on to look the other way, while revolutionary forces conducted necessary (but often extra-legal) operations.
While reflecting on these matters, he spotted Ranya in the circle of spectators around the scorched tree. She was still wearing her borrowed beret, but she was weeping with her hands covering her face. He pushed his way through to her, reaching for her shoulders from behind, turning her around and embracing her. He wanted to shield her from this disgusting spectacle, as the smoldering Jew was reduced to a twisted, blackened cinder.
Women were generally too sensitive to appreciate all of the brutal necessities involved with making a successful revolution. Trying to show some semblance of human caring, he pulled his own black bandana from a pocket and dried her tears, and then quietly suggested, “Come on, let’s go home.” His own security detail cleared a path for them to Avenida Marquette, where three black Suburbans were parked in a line.
***
Alex Garabanda stood transfixed at the window, not caring if he could be seen through the tinted glass, standing right up against it. His informant, his friend…had been burned at the stake! It seemed impossible, a nightmare beyond comprehension. The governor had been assassinated, and Luis Carvahal had been burned alive, tied to a tree! This had happened across the street from the city police headquarters, yet not one single police officer, nor for that matter firefighter, had responded!
His cell phone buzzed on his belt. After a while the sound penetrated his mind, and he pulled it out and flipped it open.
A lightly accented male voice said in English, “Did you see it, Garabanda? Did you see your Jew spy baptized in the name of your Uncle Sam? I’ll bet you did, didn’t you? Well, since your friend likes so much to receive the free gasolina, we thought we would also give him a little gift, but this time we would give it to him right out in public, and not hidden in a cemetario.”
Garabanda struggled to form words, his mouth gone dry. “Who is this?”
“It doesn’t matter who I am. What matters is we know who you are: the federal agent who sent the traitor to spy on Deleon. Now, remember this: anytime we want, we can give you the same baptism we gave to that Zionist spy. Anytime at all, gusano. Think about it.”
Garabanda was staring at his cell phone, when he saw a new text message come in. The CIRG, the Critical Incident Response Group, was being recalled to the Field Office. Garabanda text messaged a coded response, stating that he had received the instruction, and was on his way in. It would only take him five minutes to walk to the Federal Building, if he didn’t run into any hassles with the mobs of demonstrators who were streaming out of downtown.
19
Ranya was seated next to Ramos in the middle of the Suburban, as they drove out of downtown on unfamiliar surface streets. Long suppressed memories of her father were flooding her mind, brought to the surface after seeing the man burned alive. She remembered receiving the fateful call while she was at school in Charlottesville, her wild high-speed motorcycle ride home, and then finding her dad sprawled on the ground, dead and burnt. Was he already dead from his bullet wounds,
before he had been doused with gasoline and set afire? After what she had just seen, she sincerely hoped so.
Watching the man burned alive back by the stage, tied to the tree by his neck, had been beyond horrible. Her mind was spinning with a kaleidoscope of images from recent and past traumatic events. She could have escaped during the march, when she had passed up numerous opportunities to slip away, and she would have avoided poisoning her mind with those searing images. She could have run away in the mass confusion, after Deleon’s assassination. However, she had not. Now she continually flashed back to her father, charred on the ground, between the smoking ashes of their house and the burnt shell of their store.
But even in shock, numb with new and old pain, priorities rose in her mind, allowing her to control or at least to mute her outward display of emotions. She knew that no matter what, she had to keep up her act and stick to her role as a determined revolutionary, in order to make good her escape. She could not fall apart now, she could not betray her feelings, or she would destroy her best chance to rescue her son and escape from the insanity of Nuevo Mexico.
Sitting next to her, Ramos pulled out his cell phone and made a call. According to the half of the conversation that she could hear, he was referring to the man who had been burned alive as a “Jewish spy.” He said he could do the same thing to the person he called, anytime that he wanted to. This was the kind of man Basilio Ramos was. She retained her outward composure only with great effort.
Then he made another call, arranging a rendezvous, and in a few minutes the three Suburbans pulled onto the shoulder of a deserted road, within a sprawling gravel or cement manufacturing complex. A dusty gray sedan pulled over in front of their convoy, and four men in civilian clothes emerged, dragging out a fifth man who had his head and shoulders covered with a dark pillowcase. The man’s wrists were zip-tied in front of him, his hands were a livid purple. While she watched, a length of rope was secured to his wrists. Ramos stepped down from the Suburban to greet the four undercover men, who Ranya recognized as members of the Zeta Squad. He left the side door open.
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista Page 33