“Well, it’s illegal, that’s the problem!”
“How is it illegal? These are only one-tenth of an ounce, and with all of the different Indian chiefs, clearly they qualify as numismatic coins, collectibles. So how are they illegal?”
“Director Bullard, can’t you see that these coins are a deliberate attempt to circumvent the gold law?”
“Not my problem, Jay. The law says that gold coins under a half ounce are legal, up to a total of five ounces of gold per person. These are only one tenth of an ounce, and besides, they’re collectibles. So unless the law is changed, I’m not sure what you’re expecting me to do about it.”
“But the Indians are melting down all kinds of gold to make these coins, so the intent to evade the law is clear. What’s the difference between an illegal one ounce Krugerrand, and ten of these?”
“The difference is that one-tenth ounce collectible numismatic coins aren’t illegal, that’s what.”
“But…”
“Jay, what the Indians do on their reservations is their own business. That’s settled law, just like the casinos. We’re certainly not going to conduct any raids on the reservations, that’s just out of the question. Okay?”
“But…!”
“That’s all, Jay. If you feel that the law needs to be changed, fire off a letter to your Congressman. Now, send in Ms. Bosch. Thanks for your time.” Bullard spun around in his chair, looking out of his massive armored-glass window, curtly dismissing the preppy asshole.
Jay Lattimore Teague was an idiot, if he expected help in combating the growing proliferation of the “gold dimes.” Bob Bullard knew all about the new coins, he’d been out to the Golden Arrow and the other Indian casinos at least a dozen times. He’d seen the antique German minting machine in operation at the Golden Arrow Casino, and he knew the process from start to finish. Everything from gold wedding bands to gold ingots was accepted as payment at the Indian casinos.
Out at the Golden Arrow, the raw metal was melted down, purified, and minted into one-tenth and one-quarter ounce “collectible” gold coins. The Indian coins were then traded for thick stacks of blue bucks. The Indian casinos had become flourishing black market currency exchanges. The legality of this situation was somewhat undefined, but Bob Bullard’s stance was as clear as a cut diamond: he would not interfere with the gold business on the “sovereign” Indian reservations.
At least, not as long as the Golden Arrow Casino continued to deliver 250 of their gleaming new “gold dimes” to him every week. At the current rate, one thin gold dime was worth $725 New Dollars. Next week, it would probably top $750, but the price in paper dollars didn’t matter—his deal with the Indians was set in gold and only gold.
Ms. Bosch rapped on the door. Reading between the lines of her personnel file, Bullard already knew that she was a testosterone and steroid-abusing butch lesbian, with resulting anger management problems, a penchant for extreme violence, and no regard whatsoever for the civil liberties of Americans.
In other words, she was the perfect candidate to lead an IRS CART team running asset seizure operations. After studying her file, he was certain that he’d be able to recruit her into his private stable of crooked federal officers. Her CART team would eventually become his personal tool, doing his bidding and acting on his behalf. Jay Lattimore Teague would be unable to prevent this from happening. Unlike the last supervisor of San Diego’s CART unit (an incorruptible Mormon who was currently being reassigned to Fargo, North Dakota), Agent Bosch promised not to be overly fastidious on the accounting end, after the assets were seized. There would be more than enough to satisfy both Uncle Sam and Gretchen Bosch, with a little left over for Bob Bullard.
***
Gretchen Bosch looked to be every bit as tough as her file photos and her reputation. Bullard rose from behind his desk and shook her hand across it. She had a grip stronger than most men, and her eye contact was prolonged and fearless. They were the same height, but Agent Bosch had the shoulders and arms of a serious weight lifter. She was wearing a man’s gray sport jacket over a white t-shirt, and loose-fitting khaki slacks. This was a bit informal, but not out of regulation, and besides, this was her moving week. She was not yet on duty. Moreover, it was no longer permissible to demand old-fashioned gender-normed standards of grooming and attire. If Gretchen Bosch wanted to dress like a man and wear her hair in a flattop, well that was her business. Anyway, to Bob Bullard’s thinking, it was better to deal with a straight-ahead dyke, than with a limp-wristed fairy, who on any given day might decide to prance into work wearing lipstick and a skirt. Both forms of on-the-job cross-dressing were now 100% protected as a matter of law, but Bob Bullard knew which type he preferred.
“Welcome to San Diego, Agent Bosch.”
“I’m glad to be here sir. I appreciate what you did for me back in Albuquerque, getting me out of that jam.”
Her voice was low and gravely, the result of either hard drinking, too much screaming during SWAT training, smoking cigarettes, or taking steroids. In her case, he decided it was probably a combination of all four. He could see that she had probably once been an attractive woman—if one was attracted to members of communist East German swim teams. Although her blue eyes sparkled, her crew cut and complete lack of makeup or lipstick announced her sexual orientation loud and clear. This didn’t bother Bob Bullard. In fact, he saw it as a big plus. Gretchen Bosch obviously didn’t give a shit what anybody thought about her. Her natural aggression (undoubtedly boosted by steroids and male hormones) had been amply demonstrated when she attacked her girlfriend’s ex-husband with a baseball bat. Now it was up to him to channel her ferocity toward more productive ends.
“No problem, agent Bosch, I was glad to help. We need agents out here with your assertiveness. Southern California is too damned laid back for its own good, and I’m sorry to say that beach-bum attitude even creeps into our operators. Our contraband team needs a hard-charger to put the fire back into them. I think you’ve got what they’ve been missing.”
“Thank you sir. You won’t be disappointed.”
“We’ve got a long list of suspected contraband hoarders, but the last CART team leader was too damn legalistic. He just didn’t see the big picture, and frankly, I’m afraid it’s not much better with your boss, Mr. Teague. Washington’s not paying us to come up with excuses—they’re paying us for contraband asset recovery. Are we on the same page, Agent Bosch?”
“Loud and clear, Director. I’ve got no time for pencil-neck geeks and their lame-ass excuses.”
“Good. And remember, the asset recovery incentive has been raised to twelve percent. If you do your job to the max, that could double your salary. Maybe even more than that, if you’re…creative. Creative, and aggressive. So don’t be shy about using the bullion purchase lists—we’ve got names and addresses going back for years. As far as I’m concerned, anybody with a name on those coin dealer lists is fair game. That list is probable cause in my book. Use the ground penetrating radar, and the new tomoscopes for the walls. They’ve been getting great results. Ninety percent of the time, it’s buried in their backyard, or hidden in their walls. You’ll find some guns that way too, and that’s all gravy.”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. So, you’re reporting for duty next week?”
“That’s right sir, Monday. This is our moving week.”
“Do you want to stay downtown, or are you looking for a house?”
“Well, we have a little boy, and we’d like a yard for him to play in. We’re staying in the Fed Tower until we find a place.”
“Uh huh, great. That’s where I live. I love it there, but I can understand your wanting a house. Just stay on the west side of I-5—don’t even think about the east side. It’s too dangerous. There are a few nice neighborhoods over there, but overall it’s not worth it. At least the San Diego PD keeps the west side swept clear of dirtbags.”
“We were thinking about finding a house up around Mission Bay, or Pacific Beac
h.”
“Oh, that’s nice up there, very nice. Seaworld, the beaches, all that. Have you checked the forfeitures and foreclosures printout? The July listings should be out already.”
“Yes sir, we’re using it for our house hunting this week,” she replied.
This was one of the bennies of serving in federal law enforcement while the economy was in the toilet: being able to pick up plum real estate deals, for a fraction of what they would cost a civilian. This was especially true when you factored in the FEMP, the Federal Employee Mortgage Plan, which held interest rates to half of prime, and required no down payment. “You’ll be able to save a bundle on a repo, just make sure the neighborhood is safe.” Bullard rose from his executive chair, putting out his hand to shake hers again, and dismissing her. “Welcome aboard, Agent Bosch. I hope you have a productive tour in San Diego. We’ll talk again soon.”
“Thank you sir, I’ll look forward to that,” she growled cheerfully.
29
Logan’s planned arrival time was ten AM, and at five after the hour they heard the faint sound of an airplane engine to the south. Less than a minute later, a white Cessna streaked over them thirty feet above the road, rocking its wings. The turbocharged Centurion was a high-wing single engine plane like the Maule-7 Ranya had flown from Texas, but it was much sleeker, with retractable wheels and a swept-back tail. Parallel blue stripes along the white fuselage were the airplane’s only embellishment.
The plane flew beyond them, climbed into a steeply banking racetrack turn, and lined up on the road coming back. It was obviously a good flying trick to make a downwind landing with no margin for error, and all at minimum altitude below radar. The Centurion came roaring back toward them, wheels now locked down, crabbing against the crosswind.
It touched the road a thousand feet beyond the brown pickup truck that marked the nominal end of the temporary landing strip. Braking hard, it stopped only fifty feet from where they stood by the road. The engine was switched off and the propeller spun down and stopped. The left side pilot’s door opened and Logan jumped down, wearing khaki pants, a matching khaki short-sleeve shirt, and tan hiking boots. He might have been retired from government service, but he looked like a professional aviator today.
They had already discussed and planned the seating and loading arrangements, and knew exactly what to do to minimize the plane’s time on the ground. The co-pilot’s right-side seat was already folded forward to allow Ranya to climb into the back. The disassembled wing and fuselage of the borrowed Border Patrol UAV drone extended from the center of the baggage area in the rear, and forward between the headrests of the rear seats. The men quickly brought the bags to the airplane, and Ranya passed them over the rear seats, loading them into the baggage area, followed by the Dragunov rifle. Their backpacks went onto the floor and the empty fourth seat on the left side in the back.
Then the three of them scrambled around to the tail of the plane and put all of their weight on its horizontal stabilizer, lifting the nose wheel up from the pavement. Once the nose was free, they were able to walk the Cessna around 180 degrees in its own space on its two back wheels, until it was aligned on the road facing upwind.
This accomplished, they climbed into their seats and both doors were closed and latched. They fastened and tightly cinched their seatbelts, and the men slipped on headsets. Logan switched the hot engine back on, waited for a few seconds, and eased in the throttle while the turbocharger spooled up with a whine. Then he let off the toe brakes and in a moment they were accelerating down the ribbon of gray pavement. At 60 knots the plane lifted smoothly into the air, and the pilot brought the wheels up. Ahead of them to the north rose the mountains that were their destination, already dominating the horizon.
“You don’t get airsick, do you?” Logan asked Ranya, almost shouting. He lifted his right earpiece to hear her answer.
“No, I think I’ll be okay today.”
“Good, because we’re not exactly flying a standard flight profile.”
That turned out to be a major understatement. The plane, instead of climbing into the sky, dove and twisted into a dry creek bed with boulders and trees streaking past their wings.
Ranya sat behind Alex on the right side. She had an excellent view in all directions, blocked only by the forward headrests. If the Maule she had flown from Texas was a Jeep, the Cessna 210 was a BMW: faster, quieter and smoother. The Centurion’s interior was much more elegantly appointed than the Spartan Maule 7. The four bucket seats were upholstered in honey-brown leather, with headrests and seatbelts like a luxury automobile.
They were nearly always below the level of the surrounding ridgelines, often shockingly close to red rock walls as they zoomed past. Logan had already explained that they were following a “radar route,” keeping the plane in radar “shadows” below terrain. At times this meant that they could climb to over a thousand feet above the ground level, because mountains were blocking the known radar illumination, but most of the time they were below five hundred feet above ground level, and often below one hundred as trees flashed past. They hugged sandstone cliff walls so closely that Ranya thought they would clip off a wing.
At the end of what looked to be a box canyon, when it seemed certain that they were going to plow into the sheer rock face ahead, the plane pulled up hard at the last moment, cleared the wall and nosed over, leaving her floating weightless against her seat belt. In an instant they burst out over what seemed to be a mini-Grand Canyon of red and orange cliffs and buttes. The pilot immediately dove again and found a new streambed to follow, banking into its turns. She found it frightening and exhilarating at the same time, but she was not flying the plane, and she had no control over her fate. She could only trust her life to the pilot, and hope that Alex’s faith in his flying ability was deserved.
Alex and Logan both wore headsets with stalk microphones by their chins, so she was excluded from their communications. Alex was also monitoring the plane’s radios for any official notice of their low-level flight. All New Mexico law enforcement frequencies were pre-registered on their scanner. The Customs and Border Patrol plane’s radios were equipped with the current federal encryption technology. They would be alerted immediately if they had drawn the attention of law enforcement at any level. She could see the large full-color GPS map screen in the center of the console between the two men, and could follow their route, which was laid out ahead of them.
Their destination was a section of a disused mining road on the edge of the Vedado ranch, fourteen miles south of the runway and the conference center. As the crow flies, this was only eighty miles from where they had taken off from the reservation, but their winding route snaked through the valleys and canyons, making wide diversions to avoid radar and populated areas. Even so, in less than an hour Logan reduced the throttle and put down the flaps, slowing the plane, which was already flying only 200 feet above ground level. Ranya looked ahead for something which might have been a runway, and saw nothing.
They were descending into another nameless valley, seemingly the hundredth of the flight. Halfway down the side of the mountain that rose to their left, buildings and other structures appeared before them, unpainted and rusting. The pilot made one more turn, and ahead of them, she saw the road, with a straight section a few hundred yards long at its end. She felt the wheels go down, as the ground came up to meet them. Lining up for the approach was a relief for her. It was the longest the plane had flown in a straight line during the entire flight.
The right side of the road was barren and spoiled, where the earth had been scraped bare. On the left side the mountain rose up steeply, covered in spruce and aspen. Beyond the strip mine, a line of heavy timber extended across the road. They touched down gently then braked hard, but instead of stopping, the pilot continued to rapidly taxi forward until the trees closed in around them from both sides.
She remembered hearing Logan say that the Centurion had a 39-foot wingspan, now she knew why that had been an importa
nt number. There were only a few feet beyond their wingtips to the thick forest on either side. The tops of saplings brushed the bottoms of their wings. When they were a hundred yards into the trees, Logan shut down the engine.
Motionless at last, swallowed by the silence, they pulled off their headsets, unbuckled and climbed down onto the old asphalt road. Ranya was thankful to put her feet back on terra firma. For much of the past hour, she had wondered if she would survive the flight. The ground immediately around them was fairly level, a rarity after what she had seen from the air. They were in a leafy green tunnel, the sky visible only above the road where the gently swaying branches did not quite meet. The warm air actually smelled sweet, like a living potpourri of fragrant balsams. Insects trilled and buzzed—cicadas perhaps.
As they had planned, their first order of business was to turn the plane around, to ready it to fly out on a moment’s notice. The three of them once again walked behind the plane to the tail, and put all of their weight down on the horizontal stabilizer’s unmoving front edge to lift the nose, so that they could spin the plane in its own radius. While turning the plane Ranya asked Logan, “Have you landed here before? How did you find this place? I’d never have thought you could land anywhere like this.”
“That’s the whole idea,” he answered her cheerfully. “Sure, I’ve been here before. The trick is you never try to fly into a place like this without driving it first. At least I wouldn’t! Not unless I lost the engine, but that’s a different story—then you put her down wherever you can, and hope for the best. Anyway, I spotted this place from the air a couple years ago, and then I checked it out with a car. If a car can drive it at seventy miles an hour, then you’re good to go. That’s all we need, sixty knots of ground speed, and some clear space in front.
“Remember, I used to play the smuggler in training exercises. My goal was to land, unload and take off before the helicopters could catch me. Sometimes I’d just land and hide, and wait for them to fly past. They’d have to be right on my tail to know where I stopped. With trees like this, they’d have to be literally right on top to see the plane. Any side angle at all, and we’re invisible from above—all they see is trees. If I got just a few miles ahead of them and I knew where I was landing, I could beat them. Not all the time, but often enough.” He smiled at her, as they finished turning the plane. “It got pretty exciting at times. Like today.”
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista Page 51