Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista

by Matthew Bracken

  And to think that it had all happened in the space of just two years!

  Alex pulled into his driveway, wondering if his remote control still functioned, if Karin hadn’t changed the code. He pushed the button, and the garage door rumbled, rattled, and rolled up like it always had before.

  He had to straighten out the garage before he could pull his car inside. It was strewn with empty and full boxes, discarded clothes and the rest of the stuff Karin evidently didn’t want or couldn’t take. He unlocked the inside garage door into the house and wandered from room to room, taking stock of the furniture and household goods which she had left behind. The bed and some of their older, cheaper furniture was still in their former bedroom. She’d left a television there as well, an old 19-inch model sitting on the carpet. He carried it out to the living room and placed it on a battered end table, and plugged it in to catch the local news. What a day, what a weekend.

  What a life.

  He twisted the thin plastic handle to open the living room Venetian blinds, and as soon as he did, he noticed the car across the street. It was an old Chevy Caprice, dark blue. The four windows were down, and two men were sitting in the front. He could see that the driver was reading a newspaper. Alex Garabanda knew what was going on—he’d seen them plenty of times before. Not these men or this car, but their kind.

  They were from the state’s own Grupo Especial de la Vigilancia, the Special Surveillance Group. When they wanted to, they could be halfway professsional, and stay out of sight while conducting their business. Obviously, they had followed him here, and he had not seen them. Well, he hadn’t been looking…he had other problems on his mind. Now they were not making any effort at all to hide their presence. Their intention was only to intimidate him, and serve as a reminder of the state’s power over him.

  You’ll have to take a number and get in line, thought the FBI man. Everybody has power over me…

  He felt a sudden urge to just walk across the street, pull out his Sig, and blow them both away. It would be pleasant, amusing really, and it wouldn’t matter much if they drew on him as well. Who cares? He’d lost his friend and informant yesterday, and his son today. So what the hell? Why not? The Sig was still in its holster on the right side, unconcealed now that he had taken his vest off inside the house. He could simply open the front door, walk a dozen paces toward the street, and start shooting.

  Why the hell not?

  The front door was only a few steps away, but he made no move toward it. Maybe because he was just too tired to care. What possible difference would it make? Why bother? Why shoot those two nobodies? They meant nothing.

  He shut the blind, and stood by the window.

  Maybe later he’d go back to his apartment, clean it out, and get his things. He could clear out his furnished one bedroom rental unit in a single trip, if he loaded the Crown Victoria up, if he really packed it in tight. Consolidate. Get all of his things under one roof.

  Maybe later…if he had the energy.

  He wandered into the kitchen, and flipped through a tall stack of mail with no real interest. There was half of a jug of orange juice in the fridge. Karin was addicted to the stuff, and she spent a fortune on it, when she could find it. He was surprised she’d left it behind, a rare oversight. But then, she’d probably been staying with the Beast, Gretchen Bosch. In the back of an upper cabinet, he found an open bottle of Smirnoff, half-full. He poured the entire contents of the vodka bottle straight into the plastic container of OJ.

  Alex Garabanda was home. For what it was worth.

  ***

  Ranya was the only customer in the combination convenience store and gas station on Tramway Boulevard. The establishment had no name. There had once been a sign atop a steel pillar, but now the plastic face was missing, revealing only a row of fluorescent bulbs. Another business with an Anglo name, bowing to the new reality. A line of parked cars snaked from the gasoline pumps outside and down the side street, evidently awaiting the next fuel delivery. Professor Johnson’s anemic solar car suddenly seemed less pathetic to her. At least it was still capable of moving under its own power.

  The shop was dirty inside, there was no air conditioning, and the dusty shelves were only half-stocked. The solitary clerk on duty hardly glanced up to take her money and make change. She didn’t want to make possibly memorable eye contact with anyone, and so she left her sunglasses and hat on inside the store.

  The cashier didn’t blink when she slid over a crisp blue $500 bill, taken from Basilio’s safe. Not when a box of donuts cost $39, and a one-gallon plastic bottle of agua purificada went for $19. The total with tax was $73, which Ranya now understood would have been $730 in the old pre-conversion green money. What the hell had happened to the dollar, in the five years since she had been arrested? No wonder they had to grow their own food at D-Camp! She glanced at the bill before it disappeared into the cash register, and saw the smiling face of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Didn’t he say that prosperity was just around the corner, or was that Herbert Hoover?

  At the end of the transaction, she still didn’t know if the cashier spoke English or Spanish. After the recent events, she realized that both sides of the divide had good reason to be guarded about their linguistic leanings. Speaking the wrong language to the wrong person could spark a confrontation, or worse.

  Ranya walked back across Tramway against the flashing red light. It seemed like there was very little traffic, even for a Sunday morning. The extent and depth of the potholes in the asphalt were beyond anything she had ever seen before. The road was more a collection of interconnected potholes than pavement. After drinking some water and checking the area around the playground for any signs of surveillance, she put her shopping bag in the back of the Solaris. If Basilio Ramos were sending anyone out to search for her, they would be homing in on the professor’s solar-powered wagon. It was hard to imagine that he would be pursuing her so soon, not with the surprises that she had left for him. Still, the possibility could not be ruled out, so she took appropriate precautions.

  The sun was now above the mountain, and the car was in direct sunlight. She wondered how long it would take to charge up. How many hours of sitting in the sun would put how many miles of driving into the batteries? She locked up the little car, and left it to do a walk-by of the Garabanda house.

  In five minutes, she was striding up the sidewalk on the right side of Camino Del Cielo, the opposite side of the street from the Garabanda residence. The garage at 4875 was now rolled up, and as she drew near, she saw with relief that the dark Ford from the playground was parked inside. Well, hallelujah, something was going right for a change! Alexandro Garabanda was home.

  Then she noticed a new car parked at curbside directly across from the Garabanda house. It was an ugly blue American-made four door, facing away from her. She had been so intent on studying the Garabanda house that she was almost next to the car’s rear bumper before she saw that its windows were rolled down, and two men were sitting in the front seat.

  Her mood went from elation to near panic as the realization hit her that another group was watching the Garabanda house! Shit! How could that be, unless the Milicia somehow knew about the connection between herself and the Garabandas? Could Basilio Ramos have already recovered from the Libidinol overdose, and sent a posse out after her? But how could he know about her link to the Garabandas? It seemed impossible, but what else could explain the two Hispanic men sitting in a car, directly across from his house? Were they just waiting for her to show up?

  Ranya continued up the sidewalk at the same steady pace, her head turned slightly away from the street. She was dreading to hear the sound of a car engine, or doors opening, or a voice calling to her from behind. She dared not look back, imagining the two men studying her, comparing her to their search profile. But there was no sound, no shout, no footsteps, and no engine noise as she put distance between herself and the blue sedan. Damn! Now there was no way that she could approach the Garabanda house, not while there
was a team staked out across the street, watching it!

  ***

  The jug of orange juice and vodka was getting lighter each time that he lifted it from the floor to refill his plastic tumbler. Orange juice seemed to go with Sunday morning, somehow. The vodka…well…it was as good a painkiller as any.

  Karin had left his favorite living room armchair. She’d hated it and had wanted him to throw it out for years. He was mildly surprised she hadn’t put it out on the curb to be taken away, just for spite. It was just covered in cheap plaid fabric, but it fit him like a glove from his head to his knees. When he sank into its padded contours, he was finally, truly all the way home. The chair had flat hardwood armrests on either side. They were wide and level, perfect for holding remote controls, paperback books, magazines, snack bowls…or a large glass full of orange juice and vodka.

  His pistol always dug into his side in this chair, so he unholstered it and laid in on the right side armrest. That used to drive Karin mad. She couldn’t stand to see his pistol out in the open, afraid that Brian would pick it up. Well, today that was a moot point. No Brian. Now he could leave his gun right where it was until the next ice age, and not be nagged about it.

  He used the remote to flip between the Sunday morning talking-head shows, while sipping his vodka screwdriver. The latest Secretary of the Treasury, a weasel-like man with a whiney nasal voice, was explaining the new bank account withdrawal regulations to a skeptical host. The Treasury Secretary seemed to think that Americans should be grateful that the withdrawal limits were being doubled from their current $4,000 a month maximum. The catch was that in order to withdraw more than that amount, depositors would have to “invest” an equal matching amount of their New Dollars in “USA Patriot Bonds,” with a minimum ten-year maturity. This was “a vital element of the NEP, the New Economic Plan,” he said. “All real Americans should welcome the chance to support this vital national recovery effort…”

  Alex Garabanda couldn’t stand watching the man, or hearing about the administration’s New Economic Plan. He clicked the remote control’s “up” button. TOP News was showing a rubble-strewn crater in the middle of a city street, with burning cars and blasted windows radiating for a block all around it. A suicide car bomb had gone off on the street outside of the Dearborn Michigan police headquarters. An audiotaped threat had been issued, and was being played. A foreign-sounding voice demanded that the police siege of the Muslim Quarter of Detroit be lifted immediately, or more car bombs would follow. In response, the President had issued her own written statement. “The United States Government will never cave in to threats by terrorists. Furthermore, the misguided bombers were not acting in the name of true Islam, but only a small, twisted fragment of that great religion of peace. We must not…”

  Click. Hundreds of tents and tarps were being erected on the National Mall in Washington. The vanguard of the Poor People’s Party was vowing to camp there until two weeks before the Constitutional Convention, while growing in numbers every day. Their stated goal was to lead a 150-mile march up Interstate 95 through Baltimore to Philadelphia, where millions of poor people would surround the convention with “people power” and demand that…

  Click. The FBI agent continued going through the national news channels, looking for any mention of the assassination of the governor of New Mexico. Maybe it had been covered, and he had just missed it. Or maybe events in Nuevo Mexico just didn’t rate as national news any more. Maybe the state had slid beyond the national interest horizon.

  Well, Alex Garabanda remembered what had happened yesterday. He even had his own personal video recording of the Rally for Social Justice. He wondered if he was ready to watch it again…if he ever wanted to watch it again. He drained his vodka and orange juice, pushed himself up from his easy chair, and dragged his gray daypack over toward the television. He took out his camcorder, fumblingly set up the connection to the TV, and then lurched backward and fell into his chair again.

  ***

  Ranya kept walking up the sidewalk without looking back, made a right at the top of the block, and then another right, heading back down toward the playground. She was wondering if the two men in the blue sedan were waiting for her to show up, or if they were watching the house for other reasons. Alexandro Garabanda was an FBI agent, so perhaps New Mexico politics were involved. Or maybe they were just waiting for someone else there, a third party. Or maybe they were just innocently killing time. Maybe it was merely a coincidence, where the two men were parked…

  No, she couldn’t accept that. Now she had a new problem. Garabanda might leave his house at any time, and she wouldn’t be able to follow him very far in the Solaris. Neither could she approach his house while the two men were watching it.

  What could she do to get them to leave? What kind of diversion could she create, while keeping a low profile? She could take out a neighborhood transformer with the Dragunov, and create an instant power failure. She could burn an empty house. She could torch one of the empty cars parked in the line in front of the gas station on Tramway.

  Ranya sat for a while in the playground, on the same cement bench Garabanda had used, watching all around the area for any signs of surveillance on the Solaris. When she was satisfied it was clean, she walked toward the car and then continued past it, again searching for new watchers, her paranoia spiking to astronomical levels. Finally she returned to the car and quickly climbed inside. It was already stifling hot and she had to open the side windows. The indicated power level was up to 19%, a slight improvement. She pulled off her sweatshirt, squirming in the car’s tight confines. She was wearing a black t-shirt underneath.

  She saw a middle-aged Hispanic woman come out of a house on the other side of the street, walking a Chihuahua on a leash. While waiting for her dog to do its business, the woman seemed to be staring at her in the solar car. Ranya turned the ignition switch and pulled out. Her new intention was to find a spot where she could observe the two watchers across from the Garabanda house. Camino Del Cielo curved slightly to the left as it went uphill. She pulled over to the curb 200 feet behind the blue sedan, obscured behind a long roll-off construction dumpster. The green steel dumpster was sitting at curbside in front of a house undergoing renovation. From her driver’s seat, she could just see the back of the blue car, and the Garabanda house across from the two watchers. His garage door was still rolled open. There was finally time for some water, and a few stale donuts.

  The open-topped dumpster in front of her appeared to have been in that location for a very long time, long enough to be overflowing with trash. Dirt and crud was piled up around it on the asphalt. She looked more closely at the house by the dumpster. It was empty, with a half-finished room addition on one side. The project had obviously stopped in mid-construction. The bare plywood of the addition was gray and warped from long exposure to the elements. Lumber cutoffs and building debris littered the unkempt yard of dirt and weeds.

  Ranya wondered what all of the abandoned houses on Camino Del Cielo were doing to the property values on the rest of the street. It had clearly once been a thriving middle class neighborhood, but now it had fallen to seedy ruin and disrepair. Its rundown condition reminded her of the neighborhood around Mr. De Vries’s house, west of Albuquerque.

  She briefly thought about the man she’d never met in life, whose Dragunov rifle now lay behind her in the back of the wagon, covered with a dirty blanket. Jan Pieter De Vries, she guessed by his name, was probably a South African Boer. She wondered if he was a recent immigrant to the USA, driven out of that country by a hunger for freedom. Well, at least he’d gone down fighting, which was more than she could say for most Americans.

  Ranya had no way of knowing the remarkable journey the Dragunov had already taken, since its creation in the drab central Russian industrial city of Izhevsk in 1979. She would not have guessed that the rifle had been lifted from a dead Cuban “advisor” in 1987, when Lieutenant De Vries had gone into Angola with the South African Special Forces,
to battle the communist SWAPO guerrillas. The Dragunov had thereafter stayed continuously in his possession, craftily hidden and eventually smuggled into the USA, when he emigrated from the RSA.

  If Ranya Bardiwell had known this particular rifle’s unique history, she might have understood why he fired those ten bullets, killing three members of the Falcon Battalion. Jan Pieter De Vries was not the type to avoid a scrap with a Marxist paramilitary unit. Leaving his first homeland had been hard enough. He was no longer a young man, and he was done with running from communists. It was now his turn to fight a guerrilla campaign of resistance—and he had taken his best shots.

  These were the stories the Dragunov held, but it lay mute behind her, keeping its secrets. The only time the long rifle spoke out loud, was when someone put eye to scope, and finger to trigger.

  ***

  Alex Garabanda was sitting in his old easy chair getting quietly sloshed. The digital video recording from the “Rally for Social Justice” was clear enough on the small television, even with some office window glare and contrast problems. The recorded audio quality of the band playing on stage was terrible, and the Spanish lyrics were barely understandable. For the second time he saw the busloads of extra Milicianos arrive, taking up their security positions around the stage area. He saw Carlos Guzman, “El Condor,” conferring with a small group that he supposed were junior officers, all of them wearing old-style woodland pattern camouflage uniforms and pistol belts. Each zoom and pan of the camera’s lens had been his decision, and watching the video took him straight back to yesterday’s events.

  He saw Luis Carvahal arrive, and chain his bicycle to the fateful tree. He saw Luis look up toward him, and give a little nod of recognition in his direction.

  ***