Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista

by Matthew Bracken

  “Yes, I understand. And so do they.”

  “Okay, good. When your mission is finished, you can leave downtown from anywhere—the police don’t care about that. You know the way back to where we started?”

  “No problem. El Chino will be driving. He’s from San Diego.”

  “All right then. I’ll jump out up here—I have friends around the corner on the next block. Buena suerte—good luck.”

  ***

  Brian saw that Gretchen was wearing her running clothes, a loose green t-shirt and the same stretchy black pants she wore when she went for rides on her bike. She had a special pair of sneakers that she only wore when she went running. She told Mommy that she was going to run by the bay. She was going to run ten K. Brian knew that ten K was very far. It meant that Gretchen wouldn’t be back for a long time. After she left, Brian’s Mommy let him have the remote control, and she went into the bedroom and closed the door, but not all the way. In a few minutes, Brian heard the shower running. He quietly walked to Mommy and Gretchen’s bedroom, and peeked inside. Mommy’s clothes were lying across the bed, and her bathroom door was closed tight.

  This was his chance—he had enough time right now, if he hurried! He ran back to the living room. Mommy’s leather pocketbook was on the little table by the end of the sofa. She kept her cell phone in a little black pouch inside of her pocketbook. He pulled it out, and sat on the sofa, took a deep breath and opened it up.

  He remembered what to do. He pushed the ON button, and the little television lit up. He pushed CONTACTS, and the list of names appeared. The first name said ALEX. It was already a different color than the other names, so he pushed the green SEND button, and held the phone up to his ear. He could hear it buzzing on and off.

  After seven buzzes, he heard clicks, and then his Daddy’s voice! Brian said, “Hi Daddy!” but his father only said, “You’ve reached the voicemail for 505-555-4522. Leave a message after the tone.” It wasn’t really his Daddy; Brian understood with a sinking heart, it was only a tape machine. But it was his Daddy’s voice, and he suddenly realized it was a way to leave a message for him! His Daddy would hear his message, and find a way to come and get him!

  42

  Ranya was taking her turn monitoring the computer, while Alex watched cable news with the sound muted. About once a minute, someone went in or out of the Fed Tower’s revolving glass doors on Broadway.

  “Look, is that Gretchen?” she asked.

  Alex twisted the upholstered easy chair toward the desk and the laptop, reached over and tapped a command on the keyboard. The one-quarter size view of the building’s entrance went full screen. “That’s her— the Beast.”

  Gretchen Bosch was wearing a green t-shirt and black bicycling shorts, stretched over the powerful thighs of a serious body builder. She had a white sweatband around her head, and with her crew cut, it was almost impossible to tell that she was a woman. While they watched, Gretchen went through an elaborate process of stretching out, and then she disappeared running down the sidewalk on Broadway, toward the harbor four long city blocks away.

  While they were both watching the screen, the laptop’s speakers began to sound the tones of a phone number being dialed automatically, followed by ringing.

  “Excuse me—let me sit there, okay?” Ranya vacated the hardback chair in front of the computer, and Alex settled into it, typing rapidly, causing the screen to shift to another window. “That’s Karin’s phone, she’s making a call. There’s her number, and that’s the number she’s calling, see? It’s ringing.”

  Alex stared at the number Karin had dialed.

  Ranya said, “505, isn’t that the Albuquerque area code?”

  “That’s…my phone number! Karin is calling me! Oh jeez—now what?”

  They both heard Alex’s recorded announcement: “You’ve reached the voicemail for 505-555-4522. Leave a message after the tone.”

  But it wasn’t Karin’s voice they heard next.

  “Hi Daddy. This is Brian. I’m in San Diego. I hope you can hear this sometime. I really miss you a whole lot. San Diego is okay, but I wish I was with you. We didn’t go to Seaworld yet, but we went to a beach.

  Next week we’re going to move to a house, but right now we’re in a tall building. There are red trolley trains that go by our building, but Mommy doesn’t want to ride on the trolley. Maybe if you come to San Diego, maybe you can take me for a ride on the red trolley train?”

  There was a long silence, and then the child began speaking again, with pauses between each sentence.

  “Daddy, did you know today is the 4th of July? Tonight we’re going to see fireworks. When it gets dark, we’re going to walk over the trolley tracks, down to where Bob Buller keeps his big boat. Bob Buller is Gretchen’s boss. I can see his boat from our balcony. The fireworks are going to shoot up over the water.

  So Daddy, if you can hear me, I miss you a lot, a whole lot. I hope you miss me too, because it’s pretty terrible not being able to see you…

  Uh-oh, Mommy’s shower just turned off. I love you Daddy. Bye-bye.”

  They both stared at the computer screen, at the two phone numbers, Alex sitting in the chair, Ranya holding the back of the chair and leaning over his shoulder.

  Ranya spoke first, choking with emotion. “Was that saved? Can we hear it again?” She had never heard her son’s voice before, and a tear spilled onto Alex’s neck.

  “Sure, it’s all saved.”

  “He’s a great talker!”

  “Oh yeah, Brian’s as sharp as a tack. He was talking at fourteen months.”

  “Did you hear what he said at the end, about ‘Mommy’s shower’? It sounds like he was sneaking the call.”

  “Right, I think so too,” Alex agreed. “He was sneaking it.”

  “But he’s only five—and he knows how to use a telephone?”

  “I’m telling you, he’s smart, really smart. He figures things out.”

  “Will she know he used the phone? Will it show, will she check?”

  “I don’t think so, not if he puts it back the same way he found it. There’s no reason for her to check.”

  “He must be a clever little guy.” She wiped her tears with the back of her hand.

  “Oh, he is. He takes after his mother. His real mother.”

  “And he’s brave—like his father,” said Ranya. “Like both of his fathers.”

  “He knows about Bob Bullard, can you imagine that? He said that ‘Bob Buller’ is Gretchen’s boss, that’s Bob Bullard, but how would he know that?”

  Ranya hesitated, and guessed, “The television. ‘Hi, I’m Bob Bullard.’ They must have seen the homeland security commercial. Karin must have told him ‘Bob Buller’ was Gretchen’s boss.”

  “That makes sense,” Alex agreed. “He was telling me where he’s going to be tonight—on the dock where Bob Buller keeps his big boat. A dock he can see from his balcony.”

  “And he told us when: when it gets dark. And he told us they’re walking, that it’s only a few blocks. He told us everything! What do you think? Is it doable?”

  “It’s doable,” said Alex, “If we don’t get a better chance before that.”

  ***

  “If we grab the boy, we could hold him for ransom,” suggested Chino, who was in the front passenger seat. Basilio Ramos was now driving the white catering van. Chino was wearing a brown turtleneck long-sleeve jersey, to conceal the gang tattoos on his neck and arms. The small teardrops tattooed beneath the corners of his eyes were not so noticeable when they were obscured by his sunglasses. “If we take the boy, we could force Bardiwell and Garabanda to come to us.”

  Lieutenant Almeria was in the back, sitting on the floor with his laptop computer, wearing headphones. Genizaro and Salazar sat across from each other in the far back, playing cards between them. All of them were wearing long jeans, and except for Chino, they were wearing checked shirts in different patterns, loose and untucked to conceal their weapons, and their Kevlar vests. The gre
en Kawasaki was tied against the left side of the cargo van, across from the sliding door. They were driving slowly down Harbor Drive, spending 15 or 20 minutes in various parking spaces, and then moving, always remaining within sight of the Pacific Majesty.

  “That won’t work. We just need to be patient, very patient. The child is in that building, in apartment 4124. Bardiwell and Garabanda will come around; you know they will. They’ll be like tigers sniffing around the tethered goat, unaware that the hunter is also waiting and watching.”

  “Tigers are dangerous, even to hunters,” observed Chino.

  “But they don’t know they’re being hunted. We have the advantage.”

  Behind them, Almeria said, “Quiet! A call!” and they fell silent. The blue curtains were open in the middle. Almeria was situated at the front of the cargo deck behind the passenger seat, with his electronics mounted in a plywood box. After a minute, he pulled off his headphones, and said, “Comandante, you’re not going to believe this—the child has telephoned his father in Santa Fe. His English is hard for me to understand, let me play the call for you.”

  Almeria pulled the headphone jack out of the computer, and they listened to the playback of Brian Garabanda’s phone call several times, while Ramos translated his words for them all.

  “Do you think Garabanda will check his voicemail for messages soon?” asked Salazar.

  Almeria scoffed. “Voicemail? I would assume he’s already heard the call, at exactly the same time that we did. The man is an FBI agent, so I’m sure that he has the same capability that we have to listen to cell phones.”

  “Then why didn’t he answer, when his son called him?” asked Salazar.

  Genizaro said, “The boy only called the phone left in the empty hotel room in Santa Fe, did you forget this fact already?”

  “I’m not stupid, I know that! But calls can be relayed, can’t they? Garabanda could answer from another phone, from anywhere.”

  “Perhaps,” said Ramos, “But then Garabanda would be giving away his location. This tiger is no fool, he won’t make a basic mistake like that. He won’t rush into the open, to seize the staked goat.”

  Chino said, “But Garabanda will be watching for his son on Broadway, as the darkness comes.”

  “Yes, he will,” agreed Comandante Ramos. “If they have no better opportunity today, that’s when Garabanda and Bardiwell will strike—and we’ll be waiting for them.”

  ***

  Alex carefully glued a gray mustache onto his upper lip, while leaning across the bathroom sink and looking into the mirror. His very basic disguise kit was unfolded and laying across the top of the toilet tank. A silicone nose extension went on next, the flesh-toned rubber matched to his skin color with makeup. Then he put on a scraggly gray-haired wig, and a crumpled brown fedora. Boxy black-framed glasses altered the look of his eyes. He slipped on a loose-fitting dark gray suit jacket, and he was ready.

  He expected Ranya to laugh at him when he came out of the bathroom, but instead she maintained an impassive poker face, so he asked, “Well, how do I look?”

  She glanced up from monitoring the computer screen, and gave a blasé shrug. “What, have you done something? You look about the same to me.”

  “Gee, thanks. Just what I wanted to hear.”

  She broke into a grin. “No, seriously, you did a good job Alex. You look at least 75. Why, that’s a good ten or fifteen years older than usual.”

  He pulled off his brown hat and flung it at her, saying, “No respect, that’s the trouble with kids today, no respect!”

  “No, you look fine,” she said, finally laughing after ducking the hat. “You really do look 75. At least.”

  “That’s the idea. This is one of my best disguises. Nobody pays attention to us old farts, we’re practically invisible. The trick is to look too broke to be worth mugging, without quite looking homeless. And all of this garbage I’ve got on my face keeps the digital cameras from getting a match, just in case.”

  “Nobody knows we’re in San Diego anyway.”

  “You hope. But hard drives are forever. Once you’re recorded by the cameras, they can go back and check anytime, even weeks or months later.”

  She replied, “Weeks later? I hope we’re long gone by then.”

  “We will be, but you never know. Don’t make it easy for them, ever. Never make assumptions about security.” While he looked himself over in the room’s wall mirror, he briefly thought about his meeting with Luis Carvahal in the Mount Calvary cemetery, when he had believed he was not under surveillance—a fatal error.

  ***

  Alex left the Holiday Inn through a secondary exit at the end of the first floor hallway. The ten story Holiday Inn was located across Harbor Drive from the San Diego Bay. He walked across to the sidewalk that ran in front of the seafood restaurants and excursion boats on the bay side. A clipper ship longer than a football field was tied alongside the quay wall, its massive bowsprit pointing south toward Broadway. Its advertising signs declared it to be the Star of India, built in 1863, allegedly the oldest sailing ship still in operation, and now a floating museum.

  Five minutes later he was in front of the enormous government pier which extended for at least two hundred yards beyond the end of Broadway at Harbor Drive. From the shore, the massive pier seemed like a rectangular extension of Broadway, it was at least a hundred feet wide at its base. To the south, another giant pier was home to the aircraft carrier USS Midway, now a museum. To the north, back toward the Holiday Inn, another long pier was occupied by moderate-sized harbor tour and excursion boats from fifty to over a hundred feet long.

  The government pier in the middle was the exclusive territory of the security services, with small vessels from Homeland Security, Customs and Border Enforcement, the Marine Patrol, the Navy and the Coast Guard tied up to floating docks, which were attached to the higher permanent pier. Near the end of the pier, with its square transom facing the shore, was one larger vessel. It appeared to be a motor yacht, about eighty or ninety feet long. Alex stopped before he reached the government pier and took a few innocent tourist pictures with his digital camera.

  A black iron fence ran across the base of the pier, but in the center, a wide vehicle gate was open. Alex shuffled along the sidewalk, his head down, until he was in the middle of the opening, and then he steered a right turn, nonchalantly shambling out onto the pier. A uniformed guard immediately stepped out of a cement and glass security post, his arms upraised.

  “Hello, can I help you?” the guard asked in an overly loud voice, as he intercepted Alex’s path.

  “No thanks sonny, I don’t need any help. I just want to walk out there and take a picture of the Midway.”

  “Well I’m sorry old timer, but this pier is only for federal employees on official business.”

  “I can’t just walk right over there, and take a picture of the Midway?”

  “Nope, sorry. Federal property. You have to stay out there and take it.”

  “All right, I guess.” Alex put his head back down, and shuffled to the pedestrian crossing at the traffic light on Harbor Drive. This was a massive intersection, where the six lanes of Broadway ended at the six lanes of Harbor Drive. He pushed the button and waited. When the light turned green, he took care to walk as slowly as an old man with bad hips might, and no faster.

  Across Harbor Drive, there were parking lots on the north side of Broadway and government buildings to the south. A long block up Broadway there were multiple railroad tracks that carried everything from heavy freight to the local light rail commuters. Alex was amused to note that the train stop there was called the Santa Fe Station, constructed in Spanish Mission style. The station building was only missing a cross on top to be mistaken for a small Spanish colonial cathedral, an architectural throwback amidst the ultramodern glass and marble high rises of downtown San Diego.

  Alex stood on the sidewalk near the tracks—this must be where Brian watched the trains passing by. While he was looking a
round, a red electric-powered commuter train pulled into the Santa Fe Station from the north, paused while taking on and letting off passengers, and then crossed Broadway and continued toward the south. The placard sign above the conductor said “San Ysidro,” the final stop at the Mexican border a dozen miles away. Alex looked upward and saw the top floors of the Pacific Majesty, two blocks further up Broadway. Even now, Brian might be looking down at the “red trolley train” that he wanted to ride.

  Alex tried to take in everything from the point of view of a pedestrian with a small child. Where was Karin most likely to walk? At the same time, he scanned for hidden vantage points where his Durango might be parked to lay in wait. He tried to imagine how the approach could be made, where Brian’s pickup would attract the least attention, and how they could exit the area the most smoothly. If they drove straight north on Harbor Drive, they would be able to pick up Interstate 8 where it ended in a nice section of Point Loma, on the safe western side of I-5. From there, it would be a fast dash east on I-8 all the way to the Golden Arrow Casino, where Flint would be waiting for an immediate takeoff. It could work. It would work. It had to work.

  Behind the Santa Fe Station on the north side of Broadway, Alex seized a chance opportunity. A San Diego Gas and Electric emergency services truck was parked along the curb of a small access road. The back of the big white utility truck was twenty feet from Broadway. Three orange traffic cones were spread a few feet behind the truck, but no workers were in sight. The truck was clearly parked for the long holiday weekend. Alex casually picked up the two cones nearest the curb, one dangling from each hand, and dropped them in new positions a few yards closer to Broadway, effectively holding a parking space for the Durango.