It briefly crossed his mind that he was in a similar position to Corky Gutierrez. Corky worked for the state because he wanted to keep control of the Otter, his other smaller airplanes, and his house. Now Ramos was doing the same, because he wanted to keep his command of the Falcons, and “ownership” of his villa in Sandia Heights.
While his men finished loading the plane, Corky returned in his battered Nissan camioneta, followed by the fuel truck. The fuel truck driver avoided even eye contact with Ramos. The driver swiftly pulled out the black hose, climbed his ladder and gassed the plane. He departed in his truck just as quickly, without as much as a hint of the usual invoice-bearing clipboard, providing Comandante Ramos with his first smile of the day.
For the flight, Corky took the left side pilot’s seat, and Ramos sat in the copilot’s position. As the mission commander, he wanted to get a good look at San Diego from the air, before they landed. The Otter was a proper airplane, with a real cockpit that was separated from the cargo area by a bulkhead with a narrow doorway, but no door.
Corky obtained ground clearance, and taxied to the takeoff point at the end of the runway. The pilot reached up pushed the unusual overhead throttles forward, and the Otter began to roll down the runway with a roar, vibrating madly. At sixty knots of airspeed, Corky pulled back on his yoke, and the plane lifted its nose skyward and some of the vibration disappeared. The Twin Otter wasn’t a fast airplane by any means, but at short takeoffs and rapid climbing, it was a champion, and Basilio enjoyed the sensation of being pressed back into the seat. He was breaking free from Nuevo Mexico. His problems always seemed to diminish when he was strapped into a metal beast that was lifting away from the earth. Flight always meant freedom to Basilio Ramos, at least temporarily.
***
While Basilio Ramos and his handpicked team were taking off from Albuquerque, the executive helicopter flying from the Golden Arrow Casino was preparing to land in La Jolla, by the Pacific Ocean ten miles north of downtown San Diego. They could have taken another flight directly to the downtown San Diego International Airport, but Alex was concerned that the security check might be more thorough there. They were carrying concealed firearms, not to mention Ranya’s gold, which was far more than the legal maximum of five ounces. The manager at the casino had told them that they would not be wanded or checked when landing in La Jolla, but the unexpected was always a risk. The jet helicopter flight across San Diego County took half an hour.
They crossed the north-south running I-5 freeway, and the helicopter descended toward a prominent hilltop, which rose steeply above the highway that ran along its eastern base. Most of the crowded residential neighborhoods of San Diego they had flown above seemed to be concentrated atop sprawling mesas, divided by steep canyon green spaces. Many of the highways used the bottoms of these canyons as their pathway through the hills, and Interstate 5 was the last highway before the coastal foothills and the blue Pacific.
Several acres on the top of the hill they were descending toward were scraped flat and paved over. Only wind-bent scrub brush and tall grass surrounded the asphalt square, which was larger than a soccer field. There were five yellow landing circles, one in each corner and one in the center, marked H-1 through H-5. Two spots were already occupied by choppers dropping off and picking up passengers. Their pilot set down on H-3, asking them to wait for the blades to stop turning before disembarking. He climbed out first and assisted the ladies in stepping down onto the tarmac, and then he helped them to unload their luggage.
Alex had purchased two identical black rolling travel bags at the Golden Arrow Casino shops. They were each four feet long, and big enough to consolidate their smaller gear bags. Between the two of them, they could carry everything in one trip, a critical consideration. Considering what Ranya and Alex were hauling, their bags could not be left outside unattended, ever.
The road leading up to the heliport ended in a traffic circle, where yellow and orange taxis were waiting. Alex intentionally dawdled, pretending to look for something in his bag, while the two women who had accompanied them from the casino took the first taxi, and the executive who had been sitting in the front of the helicopter took the second. Only then did he begin to move toward the taxi line, pulling his rolling bag with Ranya behind him. He was wearing the gray and brown Hawaiian shirt he had just purchased at the casino shop, and new blue jeans. The flowered shirt pronounced him a harmless tourist, and the untucked bottom easily concealed his .40 caliber Sig pistol. The shirt’s broken-up design also prevented his thin lightweight body armor from printing through at the top or bottom.
In his capacity as an FBI Special Agent in Albuquerque, he had been comfortable wearing his “outdoorsman’s vest” and BDU-style tactical pants, but here in San Diego California, they would set him apart, and to the knowing eye, proclaim him to be either an “operator,” or a wannabee. Here in San Diego, he wanted to be an ordinary wealthy tourist, nobody of particular note.
They were running on blind faith and sheer momentum. They both knew that they could have been informed upon at any point along the line. Flint might have dropped a dime, or one of the staff at the Casino might have made a call. It was impossible not to be videotaped in a casino, and there was no way to know where the digital videos were being fed. If they had been set up for arrest, it might logically come right now, on this barren hilltop where they were virtually trapped.
The third taxi in line was a beat up yellow mini-van. The driver appeared to be in his late sixties at least, well beyond cop-age, so Alex judged that it was not an undercover vehicle. They approached on the sidewalk that ran downhill from the landing pad, and the driver got out and lifted up the rear hatch.
“Where to folks?” he asked, with an American accent. He had long flowing snow-white hair, combed straight back and hanging over his collar. Despite his years, he was wearing stylish wrap around sunglasses, and looked almost like an elderly Hollywood movie star. He was also wearing a Hawaiian shirt, showing old-fashioned “woody” station wagons, with surfboards on top.
“Just down to La Jolla. Prospect Street.” Alex lifted their bags into the rear luggage compartment, not wanting the driver to feel their unusually heavy weight. Then he sat in the front passenger seat. Ranya opened the sliding right side door and sat behind him.
A printed document taped to the dashboard announced the fares by zones; there was no meter. The minimum charge was $90. Alex mentally calculated that this would have been $900 dollars in the old pre-conversion greenbacks—quite a steep price for a short taxi ride.
A serpentine two-lane road took them steeply downhill, past stunning villas with breathtaking ocean views. Each switchback presented them with another panorama, a constantly changing visual feast. To the north, para-gliders slipped along rugged cliffs above the surf, where the sea breezes were turned upward. Small sandy beaches were punctuated by rocky points, the blue ocean rolling across them in long white streaks.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” asked their driver, sweeping the vista ahead of him with a gnarled hand. “One of the things I never get tired of. You know that old Beach Boys song ‘Surfin’ USA?’ Well, that was me, fifty years ago. ‘All over La Jolla,’ that’s what they said in the song, and we did, oh man, we did! I switched to long boards after I hit forty, and I surfed until I was sixty. Windansea is right down there, it’s one of the most famous surfing spots in California. Oh man, we’ve got so much great California history here, you just don’t even know where to start.”
Above the driver, taped to the sun visor next to his license, there was a color picture postcard showing a white cross on a hilltop. Judging by the size of the people standing all around it, the cross was at least thirty feet tall.
Alex said, “I haven’t been to San Diego in five or six years. Wasn’t that cross in the news? Wasn’t there a court case?”
“A court case? There sure was. It was a real donnybrook.” The old driver ran his fingertips across the faded photograph. “That was the Mount Soledad Cros
s. They had a cross up there ever since 1913, and they made a war memorial with that big white cross right after Korea, back when I was just a kid. It was a real landmark; you could see it up there against the sky from miles and miles around. The ACLU tried to make them take it down for years, since it was on public property. The county sold the land to private owners, but the judges said it didn’t matter, that it was a sham sale just to keep the cross up. So then the county took the land back, and tried to give it to the federal government as a federal war memorial park. No dice. The judge wouldn’t allow it.
“It was a real fight, it went on for years. Veterans chained themselves to the iron fence around the cross, old ladies were getting dragged away by cops in riot gear—man, it got ugly. There were candlelight vigils and pray-ins, but in the end, it just didn’t matter. Everybody thought the cross would at least stay up while the final appeal went to the Supreme Court, but it didn’t work that way. A few months after the protests died down, while everybody was waiting on the Supreme Court, the county came in at night with a crane and a flatbed truck. They cut it loose with jackhammers, and they hauled it away. In the morning, it was gone. All that was left was rebar and rubble. It’s a real shame—you used to be able to see that cross for miles and miles.”
“So what happened to the property?” asked Alex. “Is it still a war memorial?”
“Oh no, a year after the cross got knocked down, the county sold the property to another private developer. It didn’t really matter any more, once the cross was gone. The county decided to make some money off of the land, I guess.”
“What is it now? Houses?”
“The place where the cross was?”
“Right, what did they do with that place?”
“Are you kidding?” The driver turned briefly to Alex with a quizzical look. “You just landed on it—the Mount Soledad Heliport. I guess I shouldn’t complain though, almost everybody who lands there catches a taxi. Most of the folks who live on this side of I-5 don’t like to drive on the other side, so they take a lot of helicopter rides. It’s gotten to be a huge business, helicopters, because of all the kidnappings and carjackings. Still, it’s a real shame about that cross. That was a nice piece of California history that we lost.”
38
It was the best merry-go-round ever. Gretchen stood outside and made a movie with her video camera, while Mommy rode on a black horse that went up and down next to him. The music was really loud and it was fun, but it went very fast and made him get dizzy. They were in Seaport Village, which was a lot of little stores and eating places, right by Sandy Eggo Bay. It was close, so they walked there from the condo, between lots of tall buildings down to the water.
At Seaport Village, Brian’s Mommy and Gretchen were shopping a lot. His Mommy bought him a kite that looked like a shark in the kite store, but he didn’t get to play with it. Maybe tomorrow, they said. It’s a big kite, so it needs a big field, that’s what Gretchen said. But they did get to stop to buy ice cream, and Brian got to ride on the merry-go-round.
Gretchen was wearing her blue farmer pants, with the square flap that covered her front, but let everybody see her big arms and scary tattoos. Farmers named John wore overalls like that when they drove tractors in Brian’s picture books. Gretchen lifted dumbbells all the time to make her arm muscles get bigger and bigger. She wore sunglasses like two mirrors, so you never knew if she was looking right at you or not. Brian was wearing the same kind of overalls, but with a red t-shirt underneath.
Brian thought that his Mommy looked pretty, wearing her shiny green dress that hugged her skin. The wind was making her hair blow around, but that’s how Gretchen liked it. Gretchen never had to worry about the wind blowing her hair around, because she hardly had any!
They were sitting at a table outside in the sunshine, with lots of happy people walking by on a wide sidewalk, right next to the water. Some people rode by on bikes, and there were even little wagons, where people sat in the back, and another man pedaled half of a bike in the front. Brian could see the top of their condo building from there, and lots of other tall buildings too. A big Navy ship, the kind that airplanes landed on, was parked way across the Sandy Eggo Bay. In between there were sailboats and motorboats, and the big blue bridge they drove across.
***
Gretchen Bosch said, “The CART team’s going to be on standby tomorrow. Just in case. All of the federal tactical units will be on alert. It’s the old multi-agency cluster foxtrot.”
“Just in case of what?” asked Karin. “It’s only the 4th of July, what’s the big deal?”
“Just in case somebody tries to mess it up,” replied Gretchen. “Terrorism, the Mexicans, whatever.”
“Are you going to be on call?”
“Me? Hell no. I’m not officially reporting until Monday, same as you.”
“Are they having fireworks tomorrow?” asked Karin.
“Oh yeah, big time,” Gretchen growled. “Over the bay, right out there.”
A group of college-age Asian girls flashed by on roller blades, zooming down the bayside promenade, grinning and laughing. Each slim young woman was dressed in a spandex outfit, 100% color-coordinated from their skates to their helmets, including their elbow and knee protection. Every single item sparkled with newness.
After they were past, Gretchen barked, “Damn! When did we get invaded by the Chinks? You notice there was almost nobody shopping in Seaport Village but Chinks? Mexicans I expected, but when did we get invaded by the goddamn Chinese?”
Karin wiped some vanilla ice cream from her son’s chin with a paper napkin, while a pair of San Diego cops in shorts zipped by on police department mountain bikes. “Brian, do you want to see fireworks tomorrow, for the 4th of July?”
“Uh-huh,” he answered. “I like fireworks.”
Gretchen said, “We can go out on the government dock to watch the fireworks. Federal employees and dependents only. We’ll be right out there, real close to the show. We won’t even have to drive—we can just walk down Broadway and out on the pier. That’s the same pier where Bob Bullard keeps his Homeland Security boat.”
“Hi, I’m Bob Buller,” said Brian, mimicking the frequently aired DHS public service announcement. After they had seen him on television, Gretchen had pointed out his eighty-foot yacht, which was visible from the balcony of their condominium.
“Hey, that’s pretty good, kiddo,” said the mannish IRS Special Agent. “That’s right, ‘Bob Buller’ keeps his big boat there. You want to go out there tomorrow and see the fireworks, and get a look at his boat?”
“Okay,” replied Brian, a little hesitantly.
Gretchen Bosch finished her ice cream first, and stood up and stretched and flexed. “You know, Director Bullard made me an interesting offer yesterday, he said it could almost double my salary.”
“How?” asked Karin.
“The 12% RIP—that’s the new Recovery Incentive Program. It sounds like he’s pretty liberal-minded on the forfeitures. I’ll get to keep 12% of the auction value of any property we recover, but for gold, that’s just chump change. They figure the price of gold in dollars at the official rate, which is a joke. I’ll just keep as much gold as I can find. That’s what everybody does already. I mean, gold is the best money there is, only an
idiot would turn it in for paper blue bucks.”
“But Gretchen, gold is illegal, isn’t it?”
The IRS Agent laughed dismissively, while swinging on her daypack. “Karin, you are one silly little airhead, you know it?”
Another pedicab approached them along the promenade, pedaled by a panting middle-aged American man wearing a Padres ball cap, a t-shirt, frayed cut-offs and flip-flops. On the sides and back of the cab were photographic advertisements for gold and diamond jewelry, but the vertical writing on each side of the pictures was entirely in Japanese and Chinese characters.
In the back of the cab sat a young Asian couple. Behind them were stacked shopping bags and boxes, all with designer lo
gos or the names of upscale stores. They could have been honeymooners, the groom about thirty, and his slender bride a few years younger. Each was dressed immaculately, the husband in a new cream-colored suit and tie with a matching Panama hat, his young wife in a flowery red sundress with a matching chapeau. The man said something to their pedicab driver, and he stopped the cab even with Brian, who was standing near the table watching all the people go by.
The attractive young Asian woman was sitting on the pedicab’s seat closest to Brian. She held up a camera and politely asked, “Picture? Prease to take picture of brond baby boy, with brue eyes?”
Gretchen Bosch indignantly stood to her full height and stepped forward, in front of Brian. “Not only no—Hell no! No, you may not take a picture of our ‘brond’ boy! Number one: He’s not brond, he has light brown hair. And number two: Why don’t you all just go back to China, before we drop another big one on you!”
The Asian man’s eyes narrowed, his wife was left open-mouthed, gasping and speechless. The exhausted pedicab driver stared straight ahead, a dumb beast of burden, awaiting his next command. The two San Diego police on their mountain bikes, sniffing trouble, reappeared and paused across the promenade, watching from behind identical dark sunglasses.
The Asian man hissed at Gretchen, “Number one: We Japanese, not Chinese. Number two: America not drop big one on China—America only drop big one on Japan, long time ago. Now China already have many big ones here in United States, maybe in San Diego. If American President drop big one on China, Chinese President push one button, and United States finish! Understand? Finish! So nobody drop big one on China. And number three: You feed blond boy very good—when I come again to San Diego, next time he pedal rickshaw!” Then the smartly-dressed Japanese man turned forward to his pedicab driver and ordered, “Go now Big Johnny! You pedal fast, I give you big tip, hundred blue buck!”
The pedicab rolled away, while Gretchen Bosch clenched and unclenched her fists, her face scarlet with rage. She would have happily strangled that goddamn Jap, snapped his pencil neck and thrown his scrawny oriental body over the low wall into the bay. However, with the two San Diego police officers watching the entire confrontation, she was powerless to react. The IRS Special Agent knew that nothing, absolutely nothing, would torpedo her career as thoroughly as an “incident” involving a couple of San Diego’s treasured Asian tourists, the California economy’s very last golden goose.
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista Page 63