Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista

by Matthew Bracken

  Alex locked up the Durango at the end of the cul-de-sac and joined her after a minute, standing quietly off to her side.

  “Did you ever kill anybody?” she asked, without turning to face him.

  “No.”

  “Well it’s not a good feeling.” She didn’t mention the people she had killed before, six years ago. That had been different, that was war. Maybe only a dirty war, but war. They had it coming, after what they did to her father. Yesterday was different, somehow. The Falcons were not all her enemies. Yes, the Falcons were fighting a war…but it was not her war.

  “They were soldiers, with rifles,” said Alex. “They would have killed us or captured us, if you hadn’t of done what you did. It was us or them. Kill or be killed. You’re the reason we got away.”

  She sighed. Kill or be killed? She had heard that line before. Heard it, said it, seen it, done it. There was Kalil, at the wall: kill, or be killed. She heard El Condor’s words: so far, I have not been killed. She thought of Warden Linssen, back in D-Camp. The assistant warden’s death had been the price of Ranya’s freedom. There were no easy answers, no formulas to apply in every case. After several minutes of staring down the coast toward downtown, she asked, “Do you recognize that fishing pier?”

  “No,” he answered. The wooden structure was a half mile to the south, extending a few hundred yards out over the ocean, the surf tumbling through its hundred spindly legs.

  “It’s the one in the Homeland Security commercial. ‘Hi, I’m Bob Bullard.’ That one. They filmed it from the other side, from the south, but it’s the same pier.”

  “I recognize it now.”

  She said, “We’re close, aren’t we? Close to Brian.”

  “Very close.”

  “He’s just a few miles away…”

  “Yeah, he is. Come on, let’s go find him.” Alex turned away from the ocean, and a few seconds later Ranya followed.

  39

  The last time that Basilio Ramos had flown low over San Diego in a prop plane had been two decades ago, during the golden years of his youth. That had been in a much smaller twin engine Piper Navajo, and he’d never forgotten the experience. A television producer, a ‘friend’ of his mother, had flown them from San Diego to Cabo San Lucas in his private plane.

  From 5,000 feet the city looked the same as he had remembered it: not quite as dry as Albuquerque, a series of small mountains and foothills descending to the ocean. Most of the houses were crammed onto flat-topped mesas, with wide canyons and deep ravines splitting them into distinct areas. Highways furrowed the canyons, exit ramps led to roads that followed smaller side canyons up to the mesa tops.

  Some things were clearly different this time. For one thing, there appeared to be many more houses than he had recalled seeing before. Seemingly, every acre of every mesa that was less than vertical was jammed with a half dozen or more tract homes. The flat bottoms of the empty canyons were now covered with blue tarps and tents, cardboard and plywood shacks. These were familiar to him from Central and South America: squatter camps. Another difference struck him as well: mile after mile of the highways crisscrossing San Diego had high cement barrier walls on each side, giving them the appearance of industrial chutes carrying ore to a smelter.

  “Can you put us into a pattern for a go-around?” he asked his pilot on the intercom. “I want to get a good look at the city.”

  “I’m already assigned. We’re going out to the ocean and back for our approach. We can’t go south, it’s restricted air space around San Diego International.”

  They were taking the Otter into a general aviation airport ten miles northeast of downtown. Aeropuerto Chavez occupied its own mile-square mesa, surrounded by steep slopes and ravines. On the instrument panel GPS display, they could select English or Spanish, and Ramos had been amused to see that in the English version the airport was still called Montgomery Field. He could only guess if Aeropuerto Chavez was named after Cesar or Hugo, or someone else altogether.

  They flew parallel to and beyond the east-west main runway, while descending through four thousand feet of elevation toward the ocean five miles beyond. One more highway divided inland San Diego from the two-mile-wide coastal strip: Interstate 5. Ramos remembered it well. It ran from Seattle to San Diego, and terminated at the border with Mexico at San Ysidro, twenty miles south. The crossing there into Tijuana was said to be the busiest in the world.

  Over the ocean, Corky put the Otter into a left bank and turned south, presenting Ramos with a direct view south toward San Diego Bay, the Coronado Bridge, and the dozen skyscrapers dominating downtown. One of those high rises contained the five-year-old Brian Garabanda, the key to finding Ranya Bardiwell and the FBI agent.

  The thought warmed him that he was on her trail, and she had no idea. She had ruined his life, blackmailed him, wrecked his reputation as a leader of elite troops, but soon he would have her in his grasp. She would not enjoy his grasp, oh no, she would not! He thought of the final minutes of the Zionist traitor Luis Carvahal, chained to the tree by his neck, screaming as he burned. He remembered the cocky attitude of the radio talk show host Rick Haywood, before he had been dragged behind a truck and skinned alive. Then he thought again of Ranya Bardiwell, and how much more he hated her.

  After less than a minute, Corky made another banking left turn, heading east again over the mesas toward the foothills. They flew beyond Chavez field, made the final turns to pick up the approach, and lined up on the runway once again heading westward. They were flying at just over a thousand feet above the ground when the airport’s mesa loomed in front of them, and suddenly they were over the runway. The Twin Otter touched down with a slight jolt and bounce, and the Zetas were in San Diego.

  ***

  A room on the fifth floor of the downtown Holiday Inn became Alex and Ranya’s command post. It cost Alex one gold dime above the advertised $799 a night price to obtain a room with a view of the Pacific Majesty. Their room’s grimy window looked south down Harbor Drive, across three blocks of cruise ship terminal parking lots toward the Fed Tower. Alex was comfortable in Holiday Inns. They had served as operational bases throughout his FBI career. They were low profile, but had the high-speed internet connection he needed to set up his surveillance gear. His own laptop, once hooked up, became the nerve center of their effort.

  Ranya watched him quietly, while he methodically plugged accessories into his computer on the room’s desk. Her blond wig was thrown on her bed, her own short brunette hair was pressed flat to her head.

  “Okay, I’ve got Karin’s cell phone number locked in. Any calls to or from her phone, and we’ll be silent third parties. We’ll hear everything, and it’s all recorded.”

  “Will they be able to tell you’re doing this?”

  “They who? Karin? No, nobody can tell. If you have the right equipment and the right accounts, you’re good to go. I’m not even using my own account, I have a couple of dummies. They’ve been dormant, but they’ll work, and they can’t be traced to me. Trust me—this is all basic

  stuff. This is what I do. At least, it’s what I used to do.”

  “So we’ll hear every call that Karin makes?”

  “And the Beast. Gretchen Bosch. In or out. And anybody they talk to, we can capture those numbers too.”

  “Don’t you need a warrant or a judge to do this? You know, a court order?” Ranya was smiling coyly when she asked this.

  “Oh yeah, I must have forgotten,” Alex said, slapping his forehead. “It was on my to-do list. I guess it slipped my mind.”

  “Just add it to the other hundred laws we’ve broken.”

  “Why not?”

  She said, “In for a penny…”

  “…In for a pound,” he finished for her. “They can only hang you once, right?”

  “That’s right, they can only hang you once.” There was no humor in her voice when she said this.

  “Now when they use their cell phones to make plans, we’ll know. If we get lucky, we’
ll hear them talk about where they’re going, and we’ll get there first.”

  “You can do this for anybody’s phone?” she asked. “Anytime?”

  “Pretty much, but cell phones are the easiest. Of course, normally I’d need a warrant. But there’s no physical reason why you can’t. You just need this equipment. That’s what we used the dummy accounts for: fishing expeditions. Once we made our case, you know, sort of ‘unofficially,’ we’d scrounge up some probable cause to get a court order. Then we’d use our regular accounts and start recording all the calls. You know, legally.”

  “Man, that sucks so bad.”

  “It’s been this way for years,” Alex said. “It’s not exactly a secret. And it’s not just for listening to calls. Cell phones have GPS built in now, so I can tell where Karin is to within ten feet. At least, I can tell where her phone is. Look, I’ll show you how easy it is.”

  Ranya shook her head. “I wouldn’t use a cell phone then. No way.”

  “Then you’re one in a hundred. Most people start hyperventilating if you move their cell phones ten feet out of their reach. Okay, that’s done— we’re good to go on their phones. Now let me see about getting into the homeland security camera net.” Alex typed on his laptop, going through a series of new web pages and logins. “This might take a little time, I haven’t done this is California. Oh—that was easy, here we go, I’m getting it. That’s it! I’m in. Check this out, let’s see where we are.”

  A color street map of San Diego appeared on the laptop’s computer screen. Alex zoomed down the scale until the screen was just showing the city blocks immediately around the Fed Tower. Dozens of tiny camera icons appeared. He clicked on one, and a few seconds later they were rewarded with a live view of Broadway, taken from a high angle down towards the County Courthouse. The camera view took up a quarter of the screen, leaving the rest for the map.

  He clicked another camera icon, closer to the Fed Tower, and saw a view from across the street down toward the main entrance foyer, and the fountain in the center of its own small plaza. There were a pair of revolving entrance doors in the center of the building, and anti-vehicle obstacles disguised as massive flower planters evenly spaced along the curb on Broadway, fifty feet away. The first three stories of the tower were concrete, with no windows. The place was built to be a hard target.

  “Okay, we’ll save that one. Let’s keep looking…”

  “Can you do this anywhere, in any city?”

  “Not everywhere, but in cities—especially downtown—well, there’s almost nowhere that’s not covered by cameras. I can’t tilt, pan or zoom though—we’re just getting the raw feed. Whatever the camera sees, we see. Okay now, that’s a good one.”

  The camera showed the side of the Fed Tower, overlooking the entrance to its parking garage.

  “That’s another keeper—I’ll save that one too. Now, if we keep an eye on the front doors and the garage entrance, we’ll either see them walking out, or driving out. Let me split the screen up so those two views stay on top, and then you can play with it. You should get used to navigating around the city. It’s just like a video game. Once you get the hang of it, it’s sort of like swinging from building to building. You can go around the block, follow somebody, whatever you want.”

  “What happened to just sitting in undercover cars on a stakeout, eating fast food and telling corny cop jokes?”

  “Oh, that’s old school. We still do it when we have to, but in a city like this, why bother? And why take the risk? If we hang around down on the street, we’re more likely to compromise ourselves than anything else. I don’t want to even go near the Fed Tower, not until it’s time to get Brian. That building is watched like a hawk—count on it. All of these surveillance cameras we’re looking at? They have people paid to watch them, 24-7. Walk past the Pacific Majesty a few times, it’ll be noticed, and it’s all recorded. No, it’s better to just stay away from there, and use their own cameras against them. If we see Karin’s 4-Runner coming out, we’ll be able to follow it by her cell phone’s GPS position. If we already know where she’s going from her cell phone calls, we can get there first. Once I find her car parked outside on a street, I’ll stick a tracker under her luggage carrier. That big black box on her roof rack is perfect; I can hide a tracker under it easy. That way, even if she turns her cell phone off or leaves it home, we’ll be able to follow her car. Plus, the luggage box makes it easy to follow her car in traffic. We won’t have to be too close behind her. We can stay a few cars back, just eyeballing that luggage box. That’s

  important, since we only have one car. We can’t afford to spook her.”

  “Once we find her, then what?” asked Ranya.

  “If it’s just Karin and Brian, I’ve got some non-lethal happy gas. Karin doesn’t know you from Adam, so you can walk right up to her, and give her a little spritz in the face. She’ll be disoriented, sort of tripping out. I’ll get Brian, and that’s it. We’ll drive straight out to the Golden Arrow and get on the airplane.”

  “What happens to Karin?”

  “After you give her the happy gas? She staggers around like a drunk for a few hours, or she falls asleep. Not exactly a reliable witness, either way. Cops won’t listen to a word she says. They’ll assume she’s either on drugs, or she’s a lunatic. She won’t make any sense.”

  “You think it’ll work like that? That easy?”

  “Why not? They have no idea we’re in town, so they won’t have their guard up.”

  “What if ‘the Beast’ is with them?”

  “Gretchen Bosch? We’ll just have to improvise. If the happy gas doesn’t work, I’ve also got a Taser, and if it comes down to it, then there’s always bullets—they work pretty good too. We’ll see. You want to play with the cameras now?”

  “Sure.”

  ***

  Chino and Salazar took off on the Kawasaki as soon as it was unloaded from the Otter. Chino sat in front, Salazar was behind him with a compact MAC-10 submachine gun tucked against his chest, concealed beneath a black wind breaker. Both men wore black helmets with dark face shields. The two former San Diego gang members had the mission of making contact with their old compadres, in order to arrange for ground transportation and a place for the team to stay. Guarded cell phone calls had been made, and their arrival was expected, but the actual arrangements had to be made face-to-face.

  Comandante Ramos didn’t worry about their physical safety driving through San Diego. There was almost nothing as dangerous in a city as two men on a motorcycle. A moto could outmaneuver any car, and the man in back with the weapon could defend them, or attack a target with concentrated full-auto firepower. The bike could then escape through heavy traffic or squeeze through tight spaces, or even go off road to evade pursuit. There was a very good reason why two men on a moto struck mortal fear into executives from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego: it was frequently the last thing that they saw, before being riddled with bullets.

  It was after seven PM when they returned to the airfield. The motorcycle was leading a jacked-up four-wheel-drive Dodge crew cab pickup, with custom bumpers and oversized tires. The truck had a low camper shell over the back, which matched the truck’s dark blue color. The narrow side windows of the camper shell had been removed, and Ramos knew that this was to allow pistoleros with AK-47s or other serious weapons to fire from inside. It was a war-wagon, and its message was clear: attacking it would only be undertaken at great risk to the attacker.

  The truck pulled up close to the Otter, and they loaded their baggage, weapons bags, and surveillance equipment into the back. Ramos noted the thick steel plates welded inside the cargo bed as armor. The rear bumper was made of parallel steel pipes. Foot-long horizontal steel rods were welded to the bumper and tailgate, pointing rearward as anti-ramming protection. Any vehicle crashing into the truck from behind would have its radiator and engine impaled.

  The mestizo driver of the truck had some of the same neck tattoos as Salazar, including 13-13 in German
ic script. Like Chino, he also had several red and blue teardrops tattooed beneath the corners of his eyes, representing friends lost, and enemies killed.

  Chino and Salazar again rode the motorcycle ahead of the truck as they left the airport. Corky Gutierrez stayed with the plane. He was useless to them beyond his skills as a pilot, and he could best serve their needs by keeping the Otter ready to fly. Mendoza stayed at the airport with Corky, to “assist” him. They all understood his true function: to eliminate the possibility of Corky flying away, and leaving them stranded.

  Ramos sat behind the driver in the four-door crew cab truck, next to Lieutenant Almeria, his communications officer. Almeria seemed out of place among the tough vatos. This soft fellow with his gold-rimmed eyeglasses looked completely noncombative, but his special skills were essential to the success of the mission. Genizaro sat in the front passenger seat, a .45 caliber MAC-10 machine pistol on his lap. It was loaded with a thirty round magazine extending from its grip, and a long thick suppressor fixed to its stubby barrel.

  This was Chino and Salazar’s city, their home turf, and Ramos worried about them keeping their edge and staying focused on the mission. They had been disciplined troops in Nuevo Mexico, but there would be many old temptations to revisit in San Diego. The sooner this job was completed, the better. Ramos knew that every day the team remained in California, they would tend to drift away from his control.

  He hoped the mission could be completed in two or three days, maximum. The boy Brian Garabanda was the focus point, the bait. All the Zetas had to do was find him and watch him, and then they would find Bardiwell and the FBI agent. The two traitors would be like a pair of tigers stealthily approaching a staked goat, unaware of the hunter waiting in his concealed blind. They had the cell phone number of the boy’s mother, and Almeria would be able to listen to her calls, and track her location. It was a reasonable assumption that the FBI agent would have a similar capacity. The trick was in anticipating Garabanda’s moves, and outmaneuvering him. Their great advantage was that the FBI agent didn’t know that while stalking, he was also being stalked.