First the right and then the left engine was switched on, coughing and belching before catching, then roaring with fury. The propellers disappeared, but with their props set at flat pitch, they were taking the plane nowhere. The plane’s running lights came on next, red and green on the wingtips, white behind. Flashing white strobes blinked off of the transparent circles created by the whirling props, creating frozen propeller images.
“Okay,” said Comandante Ramos, “That’s all of the gold, what about the computers?”
“They’re aboard,” answered Chino.
“Then get the prisoners—we’re leaving.” He walked to the driver’s side of the Navigator, between the van and the SUV, to check that Bullard was still obediently holding the steering wheel. He was.
46
The right side rear door opened in front of Ranya, and the ugly Zeta called Genizaro unlatched the folding middle seat and pulled it forward. He had to yell to be heard over the airplane engines. “Okay, the boy is already on the avión,” he said in Spanish. “If you want to see him again, don’t make any problems. You first, chica.” He reached inside and grabbed the neckline of Ranya’s white sweatshirt with his left hand, while aiming his MAC-10 machine pistol at her with his right, and began to pull her out.
Ranya’s hands were still crossed behind her back. She leaned forward at the waist—it was not a simple process to climb out of the vehicle from the far back seat, without using her hands for support. She saw Genizaro’s finger outside the trigger guard of his MAC, and she saw that the .45 pistol he had swiped back on the yacht was still tucked into his belt, Mexican-carry. She recognized the pistol: it was her Jardine’s Custom, which she had taken from Basilio’s bedroom.
Genizaro had to steady her as she bent forward and put one foot outside of the SUV’s middle door. Then she tripped, off balance, falling against him with all of her weight, turning into him with her left shoulder. He raised his MAC-10, shoving it sideways against her to hold her back, grunting “¡Puta estupida!”
Her unbound left forearm came up to block the machine pistol, while her right hand swept up in a flashing arc toward his face. She had been holding Alex’s keys since he had cut off her flex-cuff, the tiny knife ready for this moment. Its razor-sharp serrated blade struck him below his left clavicle, ripped through his windpipe, and exited behind his right jaw. A shower of blood erupted from his throat, and both of his hands flew to his neck to try to do the impossible, to stop the Niagara of his own hot blood.
They continued to lean against each other for a few seconds—he was still standing but rapidly weakening while clutching his throat. She dropped the key chain and grabbed the .45 pistol from inside of his belt with her right hand. Chino, in his black DHS uniform, was standing only a few yards behind his teammate when this unexpected flurry of movement took place. He raised his MAC but Genizaro was directly in his line of fire and he didn’t shoot. Ranya snapped down the .45’s thumb safety and tried to take aim at Chino one-handed. As she put the green glowing front sight on him and squeezed the trigger, the dying Genizaro twisted and collapsed against her and the shot went high and wild.
Chino backpedaled furiously, trying to run past the Otter’s left wheel and wing strut and around the nose of the plane to get cover. Ranya aimed again, two handed now that Genizaro had dropped out of the way, and while she was squeezing the trigger she watched Chino’s head disappear from the nose up, his cranium and half of his face were instantly gone! The headlights of the van and the flashing strobes revealed the cause, they illuminated a blurring circle—Chino had backed straight into the spinning propeller! His body continued its backward movement until it was stopped by the ground.
Ranya didn’t dwell on the two men who were down, because she had seen Basilio Ramos standing on the other side of the white SUV before she had been dragged out. She spun to her right with her pistol still outstretched in both hands, looking for him.
***
Basilio Ramos was standing behind the Lincoln Navigator while overseeing the final step, the loading of the prisoners, when Genizaro opened the right door to pull out Ranya. With her wrists bound behind her back, she seemed to stumble off balance, when her hand unexpectedly shot up toward Genizaro’s throat. What! How? Chino ran backwards away from her, and as Ramos watched, most of his head was hacked off in an instant—he’d gone into the spinning prop! Ramos stared in momentary shock as Chino’s body tumbled backwards.
In his peripheral vision he saw that Ranya was holding a pistol, aimed at Chino’s corpse. She began to turn his way and he stepped back, around to the opposite side of the white SUV. To reach the airplane’s side hatch, he would have to cross ten feet of open space, directly under her gun. Did she even know he was there? There was no indication she did.
Ramos made a snap decision to use that open ground between the back of the SUV and the airplane to his advantage. He sprinted around the back of the Magic Chef van, keeping the white SUV between himself and Ranya to avoid being seen. From behind the right side of the van, he had a clear field of fire down the length of the Otter’s fuselage. The van’s headlights would shine on her when she crossed the open space to the plane, and they would blind her to his location. When she went for the plane and tried to climb its ladder, he’d have an easy ten meter shot at her with his pistol. The Glock didn’t have glowing night sights, but at ten meters its ordinary sights would be enough.
***
Alex was crouching in the Navigator’s open door, ready to jump out behind Ranya, when he saw the half-Asian’s instantaneous propeller decapitation. The pockmarked goon who had come for Ranya was already down in a spreading pool of blood beside the white SUV, his throat slashed with the tiny key chain knife. The dead man had dropped his MAC-10 machine pistol when he fell, and Alex snatched it up as he hopped out of the SUV and over the body.
The two former captives huddled behind the open door of the SUV, shouting to be heard over the airplane engines. Only one shot had been fired, and there was no evidence that anyone on the plane had noticed.
Alex asked her, “Where’s Ramos? He was outside—did he get on the plane?”
“I don’t know, I didn’t see him, maybe he did.”
“Brian’s on the plane, he’s in the green bag!”
“I know!” wailed Ranya.
He said, “We have to get aboard…” It was three or four yards from the back of the Navigator to the open hatch of the Otter, which was four feet above the pavement, up an aluminum boarding ladder. “We can’t wait, we have to go, Brian’s on the plane!”
Alex stepped from the back of the SUV, and a pair of shots cracked out from behind the white van’s headlights and he jumped back behind the cover of the SUV.
Another man appeared in the Otter’s open cargo door with a pistol in his hand. Ranya immediately took aim at him with her .45 pistol and fired a pair of shots into his chest, and thinking ‘Kevlar vest’ she fired another pair to his groin and hip as he turned, and he fell forward from the plane onto the tarmac.
A sudden gust of wind blasted them as the engine noise grew and changed in pitch. The aircraft jerked and slowly began to roll.
“Where’s Ramos?” she yelled.
“I think he’s behind the van,” Alex shouted back, “I think I saw his muzzle flash. But we have to go for the plane, Brian’s on it! I’ll keep him down with this,” he said, lifting the MAC-10. “Are you ready?”
“I’m ready!”
“When I go—GO!”
They ran together to the moving airplane, Ranya behind Alex as he fired a full auto burst at the van one-handed, the MAC-10 pouring out a wild salvo of .45 caliber slugs.
***
Ramos saw someone move from the SUV toward the plane and he instinctively fired two quick unaimed shots from his Glock, and the figure disappeared back behind the vehicle. It was a man, so it had to be the FBI agent. The catering van Ramos was using for cover was a few yards behind the airplane’s high left elevator. The van was angled slightly toward
the airplane, bathing it in the light of its headlamps. He stood behind the van’s passenger door so that he could remain concealed and fire right handed, waiting for the FBI agent to try to run for the plane again.
Mendoza’s face briefly appeared in the open cargo hatch, crouching to look outside. More pistol shots boomed out, and Mendoza tumbled onto the asphalt. The plane lurched and began to move, and a moment later, the FBI agent tried for the plane. Ramos fired three or four fast shots, and a torrent of bullets slammed into the catering van. He ducked behind it again for cover as glass window fragments peppered his face, and then something struck his right foot like an axe!
***
As if things weren’t already bad enough for Bob Bullard, everything went completely, totally to shit when they came to get Ranya Bardiwell out of the back seat. Somehow, she’d gotten free of the plastic flex-cuffs, and somehow she’d killed the short ugly Mexican gangster and grabbed a gun, and while Bullard continued to watch in astonishment the half-oriental gangster wearing the DHS uniform managed to stumble into the left engine’s spinning propeller, removing most of his head in a split second!
This was followed a few seconds later by even more shots, and Bullard had seen enough. He was safe from pistol fire behind two inches of bullet resistant Lexan glass and a door sandwiched with Kevlar and ceramic panels, but they had the keys—what if they came back for him? Once the killing began, it was inconceivable that he would be left alive as a witness. Any deal to let him go was off the second the shooting began.
Out of the blue, he remembered that there was a spare ignition key taped to the bottom of the ashtray. Usually he had a driver when he used the Navigator, so this extra key business wasn’t really his responsibility, but thank God that he knew about it anyway! Alone and unguarded now, Bullard pulled out the ashtray and peeled off the hidden key. He fumbled it into the ignition, switched on the hot engine, and dropped the SUV into drive with his left foot on the brake. He hunched down in the seat, floored the accelerator and the big truck launched forward and out of the line of fire. He sideswiped the open chain link gate, hit a parked car, skidded through the next sharp turn and kept going.
***
Alex scrambled up the ladder after Ranya as the airplane turned. They landed in a heap on the Otter’s cargo deck, and crawled inside.
“Cockpit!” he yelled, untangling himself from Ranya and the loose bags and boxes piled into most of the open space. “Let’s take the cockpit!”
There wasn’t standing headroom inside the Otter, so they had to run forward bent over, climbing over more deck cargo. It was about twenty feet from the rear door to the cockpit bulkhead. There was a row of seats installed down the left side of the interior; the right side was stacked with boxes and luggage strapped to the fuselage. The interior was dimly lit by a pair of overhead lights.
Alex went first, with the Ingram machine pistol. The cockpit was divided from the cargo area by a wall, with a narrow vertical opening but no door. A man was sitting in the front passenger seat, behind the left side of the cockpit bulkhead. He turned slowly, as if afraid to see who was boarding the plane after the shooting had stopped—his friends, or his enemies. He was a pudgy-faced man in his thirties wearing round gold-rimmed glasses, and he slowly raised both open hands when he recognized the outcome of the firefight. In Spanish and English he calmly stated, “Your prisoner, señor. Teniente Almeria, a sus ordenes. At your orders.”
Alex left their unexpected captive to Ranya and he continued into the cockpit, leading with his MAC-10, holding the warm suppressor with his left hand. The pilot was in the left seat, the right seat was empty. Both of his hands were clamped on the yoke in front of him, headphones were fitted over his ears. The brushy-mustached pilot turned around in his seat, his eyes wide at the sight of the stranger with the submachine gun, and then he shrugged as if to say, “Okay, now what?”
Almost reading his mind, Alex demanded, “What do you think, I’m here to arrest you? Get this crate in the air! Just fly this son of a bitch!”
***
Basilio Ramos sat on the ground next to the van’s front tire, holding his right foot, which hurt as if a tank’s tread had just crushed it. The leather of his black cross trainer was shredded across the top, just inches behind his toes, and it was bleeding like a butchered pig’s neck. Ranya and the FBI agent had made it into the Otter. Bullard had somehow gotten the big white SUV started, and had taken off with his tires squealing. Genizaro, Chino and Mendoza lay dead on the tarmac, a triangle of fresh corpses. The van’s headlights shone across their bodies, their blood glistening in black pools beneath each of them. Before him was a scene of utter defeat and ruin. From Wednesday at Vedado Ranch until right now at this airport, Bardiwell and Garabanda had brought him only death, disgrace, failure, pain, injury and humiliation.
The Twin Otter lurched, the propellers threw back a new blast of wind, and it began to roll forward. The massive tail rudder shifted from side to side above him, and then the plane started to pivot to the left, to taxi toward the runway. Basilio Ramos knew that the moment of truth had come: he could sit where he was, put a belt tourniquet around his right ankle, and wait to be arrested. Or…
He pulled himself up by the van’s door handle, and he hopped, hobbled and jumped on his good left leg, putting as little weight as he could on his injured right foot. Just as the airplane finished its pivot and began to roll forward again, he made it to the ladder that hung from the side of the hatch. He pushed off with his left leg, and managed to get the arch of his bullet-shot right foot onto its lowest rung, but it could not support his weight and it slipped through and he fell, catching himself with his elbows and the crook of his right knee as the Otter accelerated, painfully dragging him across the asphalt.
***
Alex shouted at the pilot, “That’s right, you have a new boss! Just get this thing in the air!” The plane lurched and Alex lost his balance, and he decided he had better be in the copilot’s seat during the takeoff. He dropped into the empty right seat, the MAC held sideways, aimed at the pilot. Alex took a quick look around the cockpit, and then forward where the plane’s landing lights illuminated the empty airfield ahead of them.
Then he became aware of a sharp pain in his side that didn’t diminish, even as he got his breath back. This was a pain under his right ribs, a deep pain like a cramp or a hard punch, and sudden fear enveloped him: he’d been shot. He laid the MAC across his lap and pulled up the bottom of his black sweatshirt, and ran his left hand down his smooth white Kevlar vest to where it hurt the most. He felt the protruding base of the projectile, the slug trapped inside the layers of fabric, but not penetrating. The slug was only an inch from the bottom edge of the vest. He knew he’d have a hell of a bruise there tomorrow. He’d seen them before on the luckiest cops and agents, the type of livid welts for which you sincerely thanked God.
***
Ranya had to secure the prisoner before she could look for Brian. Across from the row of seats was a pile of bags and boxes, much of which had clearly just been thrown aboard the plane. While holding the .45 on him, she grabbed a dark rag from the pile; the rag turned out to be a brown Milicia t-shirt. She thrust it to Almeria with her left hand, the cocked .45 still aimed at his face.
“Su cubierta,” she ordered. “Put on your mask.” He did as he was instructed. Once the brown shirt was draped over his head down to his shoulders and he was blinded, Ranya breathed easier. The New Mexico “Zia” design with the red star was crookedly centered on his face, and she briefly smiled. On the side of the plane opposite the seats were long bars for tying down cargo; lengths of line were looped over the bars. She shoved the .45 back under her belt, took a six-foot length of stout nylon cord and quickly tied a slipknot in one end.
“Sus manos. Give me your hands, together.” Again he did as he was ordered, extending both arms, crossed at the wrists. Ranya pulled the loop snug around both wrists, tightly wrapped them several more times with crisscrossed lashings, and then secu
red his bound hands to the left armrest with knots that would need a knife to undo. She repeated the process more quickly with his ankles and finally she was satisfied. The entire hurried process of securing the prisoner had taken no more than one minute.
The plane was still taxiing on the ground, and at last she was able to search for Brian. She found the green canvas bag on the deck in the space between the second and third seats, and she pulled it into the cluttered passageway. She crouched and unzipped it, and opened it wide. Brian was curled in the fetal position, his eyes tightly closed, shaking.
She touched his hair, put her hand on his back, and said, “Brian! Brian, are you okay?”
He turned his face and opened his eyes, his entire body quivering.
Ranya said, “It’s all right Brian, you’re all right!”
“Is…is my D…D…Daddy okay?” he asked.
“Yes, he’s okay Brian! Your Daddy’s fine!” She knelt on the deck, and reached her arms inside of the bag and around his back, helping him to sit up.
“We’re on an airplane, aren’t we?”
“Yes, we’re on an airplane. Your father is up front—he’s helping the pilot.”
Brian blinked at her, and said, “My Daddy flies a lot. FBI agents can do anything.”
“Yes, they can.” Her eyes filled with tears, she slipped her hands under his arms, and pulled him up until he was standing and she hugged him hard, and then boosted him onto the open third seat. “We’re going to take off in a minute, so we need to get you buckled up, okay Brian?”
“Did you cut yourself?” he asked, while she settled him onto the seat and cinched the belt across his lap.
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista Page 74