Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista

by Matthew Bracken

  “But I can’t help it—I’ve gotta go!”

  “You know, we’re going to be in the car all day. You’re going to have to learn how to hold it. We won’t be able to stop for you every five minutes.”

  “But I have to go!”

  Karin Bergen sighed loudly in exasperation. “Okay Bri-bri, let’s see what we can do.” She picked up a slim walkie-talkie from the center console of her Toyota 4-Runner. She was following behind a black Chevy Avalanche pickup, which was pulling a trailer. “Gretch, it’s me, over.”

  “What’s up?” Gretchen Bosch’s gravelly voice came back through the radio.

  “Brian’s gotta go to the john. I’m going to swing by my old house.”

  “Okay girlfriend. We’re early—we’ll still be at the playground by eight.”

  “Roger.”

  Brian asked, “Mommy, is Daddy at our house?”

  “No sweetie, we’re going to see him at your old playground.”

  “Mommy, is Daddy coming with us?”

  “No sweetie, Daddy has to stay here.”

  “But why?”

  “You know why.”

  He said nothing for half a minute, thinking about this. “Mommy, how far is Sandy Eggo from Albakirky?”

  “Very far, Bri-bri, almost a thousand miles. It’ll take us all day. All day today, and some of tomorrow. We’re stopping halfway tonight, so we’ll be there tomorrow.”

  ***

  Ranya was scrunched down low in the driver’s seat of the Solaris, when a big black crew-cab pickup truck pulling a trailer rolled up Camino del Cielo and passed in front of her. The truck was followed by a silver-gray SUV, which slowed, and made a left into the driveway of 4875! The truck continued and made a round U-turn at the next four-way stop sign intersection a half block up the street. Then the truck slowly came back down the street, and pulled to the curb directly in front of 4875. What the heck? Had the Garabanda family been away over night? Were they returning from a vacation? Why two vehicles? Was it FBI-related business? That might make sense. The truck was jammed with cargo in the back, covered by a gray plastic tarp. The silver SUV in the driveway had a black luggage carrier attached to its roof rack.

  The driver’s door of the silver SUV opened, and a woman with a thick mane of blond hair stepped out. She walked around to the other side, opened the rear passenger door and leaned inside. In a moment, a toddler climbed down. Ranya’s heart raced, she grabbed for Basilio’s small binoculars. Was she seeing her own son, who was now named Brian Garabanda?

  The blond woman was wearing jeans and a gray sweater. Ranya thought the child was about the right size to be a five year old, but he was wearing pink overalls. Was this child a girl? Then the driver’s door of the black pickup parked on the street opened, and a man stepped out, wearing denim farmer’s overalls, showing muscular tattooed arms. His light brown hair was cut very short on the sides, and brushed straight up in a crew cut on top. Was this Special Agent Alexandro Garabanda? If so, he was undoubtedly armed at this very moment. FBI agents always were armed, she thought, on duty or off.

  He was standing directly in the path Ranya would take to approach the woman and child in the driveway. She briefly considered attempting a one hundred foot pistol shot with her untested .45, but ruled it out as unrealistic. Despite it being an excellent pistol, she had never fired it. She could not know with certainty where its bullets would hit, when fired at a target a hundred feet away.

  At best, taking the shot would result in a suburban street battle with an uncertain outcome, especially if the agent was wearing concealed body armor. To make matters worse, his black pickup was blocking the driveway, trapping the silver SUV. Even if she nailed the man in the coveralls, she would have to somehow race across the street and seize Brian from his false mother, and then what, escape in the pickup truck, towing the trailer? Or move the truck, and escape in the SUV?

  The Dragunov rifle was behind her in the back of the mini-wagon, covered by a blanket. Could she get the four foot long rifle unlimbered and into position, sticking out of her driver’s side window, without attracting the attention of the man waiting in the street? No, she decided, and besides, the angles were all wrong for shooting from her driver’s seat position. She’d have to climb out of the car to make the shot. He was certain to notice all of that preparatory movement.

  And even if she managed to shoot both adults, could she make a clean escape from New Mexico with Brian, after waking up the entire subdivision with gunfire, and leaving two corpses lying on the street? How would Brian be likely to react to seeing his “parents” shot down? How would he react to a strange woman grabbing him, after witnessing that kind of violence?

  The blond woman and the child walked up the short path to the front door. She put a key into the lock and both of them disappeared inside. The blond had her own house key, so she must be Garabanda’s wife.

  The man standing by the pickup turned and stretched his arms out, and bounced on his toes, apparently limbering up. For a moment, he seemed to look straight at Ranya. She was already hiding far down in the seat, with just her eyes above the dashboard. She froze like a deer, hoping the interior of the garage was in deep shadow from the man’s point of view. Then Ranya noticed something unusual about the shape of the man, very unusual, and it suddenly became clear—all too clear—he was a she! The big guy with the brush cut and the muscular tattooed arms was a woman! A very big woman, but still a woman, with breasts and all!

  Ranya was stunned, trying to make sense of the situation. The tattooed woman in the overalls didn’t go into the house, but instead she walked around the bed of the black truck, tugging at the lashings that secured the gray tarp over the load. Ranya’s head was spinning, trying to come up with a new plan. This might be her only chance to get Brian! She could now see that the big woman by the truck was carrying a pistol. Its butt was visible, sticking out at the waist of the overalls on the side. Could she get out of the Solaris and take down the tattooed woman with her own .45, while her back was turned? Rush her and subdue her without a gunfight or a loud struggle, while her son (if it was her son!) was in the house? But then what? Then what?

  The front door of the house opened again, and the woman and the child returned to their silver SUV. The burly female driver slid back into her truck, and all of their doors closed. The truck pulled down Camino Del Cielo, followed by the SUV. In a minute, they would be back on Tramway Road, headed for God knows where!

  Would they be returning to this house later today? Not likely, the way both vehicles were loaded down. And was that child Brian anyway? Ranya had to admit, she had seen no sign of anybody else in the house during the hours that she had been watching it.

  Where was Alexandro Garabanda, and who was that tattooed woman in the overalls?

  The two vehicles were already a block down the street when Ranya decided to follow them. But with the little electric car at only 12% charge, just how far could she follow them? If she ran out of power, what then? She’d be stranded and on foot until the car could recharge in the sun, and how long would that take?

  Perhaps they were going only to another house nearby, or perhaps they would stop for gas. But was the child even Brian? What if it was some other child? What should she do? If she followed them, at least she could see which way they were heading, and at least that would be something…but what good would that information do if she couldn’t keep up with them?

  Why had she decided to take Professor Johnson’s pathetic electric car in the first place? She had stupidly assumed that the Garabanda’s would all be waiting for her at home, fat dumb and happy, ready to politely cooperate with a straight-up home invasion, and (from their point of view) the abduction of their son. But reality, dammit, was not working out as neatly as she had visualized!

  Ranya pulled out of the garage. The trucks were two blocks ahead, almost back down to Tramway Road, where they would accelerate to a speed the Solaris could not hope to match. Then the black truck slowed for a stop si
gn, and both vehicles made a left turn, staying within the subdivision. Ranya followed, a sliver of hope creeping back in. Perhaps they really were going to another house, where she might get a second chance to grab Brian.

  The black truck pulled to a stop along the side of the new road, next to a waist-high chain link fence. On the other side of the fence was a small playground: there was a swing set, seesaws, a jungle gym made of pipes, and a colorful multi-level playhouse structure. She couldn’t park the Solaris on the same stretch of the road with the vehicles she was following. Instead, she stopped just before the corner, where she could observe the two trucks by the playground. The power was down to 11% when she switched off the ignition—the electric car’s nearly depleted battery banks lost power by the block!

  She watched the drivers’ doors of the pickup and the SUV open. She scanned the playground. A man was already there, sitting on a bench by the swing sets. He was clean-shaven, wearing jeans and a tan vest over a t-shirt. He had no children with him that she could see. Perhaps he was a smoker, who was not allowed to enjoy his habit in his own home. But he wasn’t smoking, or feeding birds, or walking a dog or anything else.

  The man was waiting for someone.

  ***

  Alex Garabanda stood up from the bench when he saw Gretchen Bosch’s black pickup approaching the playground. It was five minutes after eight AM, and he’d been on the playground for twenty minutes. Her truck was loaded down in the back, and it was hauling a cargo trailer. Karin’s 4Runner pulled up behind the truck and they both parked. It figured that Gretchen would come—they both knew how her presence would piss him off. He’d have to be extremely careful, and control his temper. Karin had surreptitiously taped their conversations in the past, and he knew she was probably carrying a recorder today. If he said anything which could be construed in any way as threatening, she’d run straight to Judge Galatea Obregon with the tape.

  Gretchen Bosch got out first, looking around in all directions. Garabanda could see that she was wearing her blue denim farmer’s overalls. She liked to show off her steroid-enhanced weightlifter’s shoulders and arms, with their encircling rings of blue-black Polynesian tattoos. While he watched her from about fifty yards away, he saw her lift her right hand, almost as if to wave to him, but instead she was hoisting a small camcorder into position. He’d have to keep his distance from Karin, or Gretchen’s “videotaped evidence” would be used to show him making “threatening movements or gestures.” He knew how it would go down: Karin would flatly deny inviting him here to see Brian. Instead, she would allege that he was stalking them in violation of his restraining order. She was setting him up like a bowling pin.

  It took an effort of will not to give Gretchen Bosch two middle fingers to record for her video. He idly wondered if he could draw, fire his Sig and hit her before she could duck behind her truck. He hated the Beast even more than he hated Karin, if that was possible. The overalls, bare shoulders, tattooed arms and crew cut summed up her thuggish personality. At least today, she wasn’t carrying an aluminum baseball bat. He often thought that her personality was perfectly suited for her position, leading one of the Internal Revenue Service’s new Contraband Asset Recovery Teams. “Contraband assets” my ass, Garabanda thought. “Contraband assets” was federal Newspeak for gold, unregistered cash, foreign currency accounts and other prohibited forms of private wealth, which were now outlawed in the name of stopping “money laundering” by “terrorist and criminal organizations.”

  No longer satisfied with merely plundering taxpayers’ diminishing paychecks, the IRS was now also in the business of legally looting the “contraband assets” of American citizens. Since the creation of the CART teams, the IRS’s Criminal Investigations Division was enjoying a boom within federal law enforcement. Under the CID’s “Recovery Incentives Program,” agents received a percentage of the value of the “contraband assets” that they “recovered” from Americans. Their standard mission involved kicking down doors and stealing people’s property and life savings, while dressed in black uniforms and body armor. Then, the CART teams would literally “cart off” the citizens’ formerly legal “contraband assets,” supposedly for delivery to the U.S. Treasury. What the IRS teams couldn’t haul away went under the gavel at public auction, and the IRS agents received a percentage of the take.

  Karin climbed out of her SUV next, and went around and unbuckled Brian from his child seat. She led him by his hand as they walked together down the sidewalk, toward the opening in the playground fence. That’s when he noticed Brian was wearing pink coveralls. Pink! She is definitely trying to provoke me, he thought. He looked back to Gretchen Bosch; she was holding the camcorder up in front of her face.

  ***

  As soon as they entered the playground, Brian began to pull and twist, trying to break loose from his mother’s tight grip on his wrist. “Let me go Mommy—let me go! There’s Daddy!”

  Finally, Karin relented. “Okay Bri-bri, go ahead. Give your father a hug, and say goodbye.”

  He leaned forward and dashed the fifty feet across the rubberized playground surface, and leaped from a yard away into Alex Garabanda’s open arms. His father pulled him up the rest of the way into his embrace, while spinning into a turn so that Brian’s legs flew outward in a circle. He hugged his son tightly, kissing his face and neck.

  “I missed you tiger, I really, really missed you.”

  “I missed you too Daddy. So much!”

  They said nothing for a minute, and then Alex Garabanda let his son slide down, and knelt on the rubberized surface to get to Brian’s eye level. Karin stood twenty feet away, watching silently with her arms folded. Gretchen Bosch stayed back by her truck, also watching.

  “Daddy, are you coming to Sandy Eggo too? Please Daddy…”

  “San Diego?” He stood and faced Karin. “What’s this about San Diego? What the hell are you trying to pull?” Brian scampered off and climbed up the play tower, and started to rock and swing on a little chain suspension bridge.

  “We have permission from the court.” She snapped a white business-size envelope against her leg. “It’s right here. There’s nothing you can do to stop us.”

  “Oh no—no way!”

  “Oh yes, yes way,” she said, mimicking him. “And if you interfere in any way, you’ll be breaking your restraining order, and the judge will put out an arrest warrant. They’d just love that down at the Field Office, wouldn’t they Al?”

  “Karin, this isn’t right! The TRO didn’t give you permission to take Brian out of the state!”

  “It does now. It’s all right here.” She tossed the envelope onto the ground between them.

  “Karin, this is not right, and it’s not fair to Brian.”

  “We’re leaving, Al. You can keep the house. We’re out. Everything that’s left in the house, you can have it. It’s all yours: keep it, give it away, burn it, I don’t care. But we’ve got to go now—we’re leaving from the annex at nine. We’re traveling in a federal convoy and they won’t wait, so we have to get going.”

  “Karin, why are you doing this? Why? You’ve even got him dressed in pink for God’s sake. Pink! What are you trying to prove?”

  “That’s not pink, that’s orchid. Anyway, what’s it matter to you?”

  “Orchid, pink, what’s the difference? He’s a boy, damn it! Why are you twisting the knife like this? Does this give you pleasure?”

  “Pleasure? This has nothing to do with pleasure! We just think you’ve already done enough damage to Brian’s psyche, that’s all. You’ve tried your best to turn him into a little macho man, always playing with toy guns and wearing camouflage. Well, we’re breaking your chain of patriarchy. We’re not going to inflict another heterosexist creep like you on the world!”

  “Karin, this isn’t right. It’s not right, you can’t do this—I’ll get an injunction!”

  “You’re too late,” she hissed. “It’s all perfectly legal, and we’re doing it. But you know, I hope you do try s
omething stupid—a little time in jail might just do you some good. And after you get out, you’ll be done with Brian forever—finito. So go ahead, try to stop us!”

  “Karin…please…”

  She turned and walked over to the play tower and pulled Brian down, keeping a strong grip on his wrist. “Come on Bri-bri. We have to go now. We have a long drive ahead of us. Say goodbye to Daddy.”

  ***

  Ranya studied the scene through her compact seven power Steiners. She could almost lip-read what the man was saying. The little boy—Brian?— had run to him when they arrived at the playground. What was going on? Slowly, she guessed at some theories that might explain the meeting. A custody turnover? Maybe. On Sunday morning? Possibly. Are the Garabanda’s separated, or even divorced? The boy ran to him, and his father swung him up into a tight hug. Their mutual affection was genuine and obvious.

  The man and the blond woman had some words together, standing fifteen or twenty feet apart. The woman waved some papers at the man, and dropped them on the ground. Then she walked over to the playhouse, pulled the child down, and dragged him back toward the street by his arm.

  The man followed them, the woman turned around and they had some more words, and he stopped.

  After the two women and the child got back into their vehicles, they quickly pulled out, made a right turn and drove the last block down to Tramway Boulevard. The Solaris had only a small residual battery charge remaining, so pursuit at this point would be meaningless. Even if she could catch up to the two vehicles, how could she overcome them with her little electric car? Shoot out the black truck’s tires, and then go after the silver SUV? It was all too far-fetched. Her son was gone, at least for now. She had to face reality. She was back to square one.

  The man—Brian’s so-called father—dropped back onto the cement park bench and sat motionless, staring. Brian was gone, beyond the possibility of pursuit for now…but his “father” was still a connection to his “son.” If this man were in fact Special Agent Alexandro Garabanda, he would at least know, presumably, where Brian was being taken.