by Reed Hill
“Hidden in the maze of language in this so-called DREAM Act is a provision that forces children born here – in the United States – to wait until their parents have obtained citizenship, before they can be considered for it. The wonderful DREAM Act has made over two million citizens – children from newborns for teenagers – into non-citizens, no longer able to point to their state-issued birth certificates but needing to hope and pray that their parents can negotiate the traps and pits of the nightmarish labyrinth that is the new immigration process – which the past three years have taught us seventy percent of immigrants fail to complete it.
“This injustice cannot and will not be allowed to remain!
“With the passage of this horrible law, we saw the citizenship of seventy-five thousand brothers and sisters who have served honorably in the U.S. military revoked. After risking their lives fighting in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, they now have seen this law make them illegal residents once again. Brave soldiers, like myself, who are very proud to have served. I fought for three years in Afghanistan for the U.S. Army – and won the Silver Star for gallantry in action – only to be rounded up and thrown across the border like a felon. I was treated like a common criminal.
“This cannot be allowed to stand!
“Their agenda is plain to see, brothers and sisters. They want to keep us down – at the back of the bus. Under foot. We cannot go backward because of this one law. They say that the matter is settled!
“Well I say that it is not!
“They want us to bend and scrape, harvest the fields with a smile and a nod, without asking for a thing.
“Well I say no way, no how, no chance!
“They want us to stand back and be second class citizens.
“Well I say there’s no such thing!
“My friends, either we are full citizens or we are slaves. There is no middle ground, and we cannot roll over and accept this injustice. We’re in a civil war, brothers and sisters – make no mistake about it.
“At one time in America, a vaunted Paul Revere made a historic ride, warning the colonists “The British are Coming! The British are Coming!” Well, I have some words for the white oppressors in America. The Latinos are Coming! The Latinos are Coming!
“God bless us and our struggle!
“We will prevail!
“We are La Raza! We are the Race! Viva La Raza!”
As the former war hero turned to walk off the stage, waving to the throng, the crowd chanted his name, cheering and applauding.
In the blink of an eye, cheering turned to screaming.
Gunshots.
Chaos.
*****
Downtown
Torreón, Mexico - July 1st, 2017
Don Morales and Don Vasquez both sat and watched as the tall, curly-haired man in the brown leather jacket and cream-colored silk slacks paced across the restaurant toward them. The man’s guards, both well-built Mexicanos in black leather jackets, trailed behind him, trying to appear casual despite the fact that many eyes in the restaurant were trained on them. The Dons rose as he approached the table and extended his hand, motioning with a bob of his head for his goons to find a seat at the nearby bar.
“Mucho gusto, Don Morales. Gusto Don Vasquez.” His Spanish was fluid, gentle even. “I’m sorry I’m late. I’m afraid I don’t know Torreón as well as I should.” Daníel Sifuentes had an old-world manner and the looks of a Spanish gentleman. He studied the two Dons and wondered if the pair could be completely trusted. The answer, of course, was a resounding no. Who could be completely trusted in these days of turmoil?
“Not at all Senor Sifuentes,” Morales smoothed his white shirt and straightened his suit coat. “We’ve been enjoying some Don Eduardo. Let me get you one.”
“Thank you very much. That would be lovely. My throat is dusty from the road.”
Morales snapped in the air and a waiter appeared from behind the bar, bearing a short tumbler. He poured a double of the pricy tequila.
Daníel Sifuentes drank it down, clearing a few drops from his thick mustache, “Ahh, that’s fine.” He nodded to the waiter to refill it, and it was done immediately. He leaned back and threw one leg over the other studying the two men, “I assume there has been no word from the north that would concern us at this point?”
“Not at all.” Morales looked around a bit, “Everything has gone seamlessly.”
“How about El Presidente?” Sifuentes raised an eyebrow toward Morales.
“In Rio on vacation for two weeks, starting today.”
Vazquez glanced about the large popular restaurant, which was awash in the din from perhaps a hundred patrons, and slid the brown leather briefcase under the table to Sifuentes with his foot. Even in the cool night air of the hills of Torreón, Vazquez sweated profusely and mopped his forehead with the cloth napkin in his lap.
Sifuentes glanced at the two men and reached down, feeling the weight of the briefcase, “Perfecto.” As he grabbed it and stood, he stroked his mustache and gave a wry grin. His bodyguards rose and joined him, and he placed his hand on the table and leaned down. “Do not worry my friends – you will remember this day,” he grinned, “forever.”
Sifuentes stuck his chin out and signaled his bodyguards to follow him as he strode across the restaurant and out onto the boulevard to the waiting car. The driver opened the door for him and he slid into the back seat, next to the lean, smallish man in his twenties. Sifuentes looked at the Mestizo-faced man, noting the small the teardrop tattoo at the corner of his right eye, “We are ready, Raúl. You can begin your preparations.”
Sifuentes opened the briefcase, and removed two bundles of cash from the neatly organized stacks, thumbing through them. He handed them to Raúl, “Fifty thousand American now, just as we agreed.” Raúl reached out and took the bundles. Sifuentes noticed that Raúl had a small spider tattoo on the back of his hand, near the thumb, and thought it was odd he had never noticed before. “And another fifty thousand when the job is done.” Raúl stuffed the two bundles of cash into the breast pockets of his brown suede jacket, one on each side, and adjusted his shoulder holster.
The driver fired up the car and drove them down the boulevard. Sifuentes admired the old gas lamps on the street, “It won’t be long now, Raúl.” He raised his hand to his mouth and let his fingers rest against his cheek, “We’re going to have the land of our forefathers back.”
Sifuentes turned to face the young mestizo, “After all this time, gaining back so much that has been taken from us will be our honor.”
Part I
Stoking the Forge
Chapter 1
Three Eagles Ranch
Outside of Hunt, Texas - July 5th, 2017 – 2:50 a.m.
He stirred in his chair at the high pitched vibration of his pager as it rattled the coffee table glass. He shook his head trying to rid himself of the drowsy fog of sleep and moved for the pager, his lower back objecting with a twinge of pain. The long-forgotten empty whiskey bottle rolled from his fingers and hit the red travertine tile with a hollow bounce and, somehow, did not shatter. He thanked the Lord silently for that small blessing as he shoved the bottle under the couch with his foot.
The single line of the old-school, belt-clip pager showed a San Antonio area code, but a number he didn’t recognize. Not many folks had his pager number, so it was odd to him that he didn’t recognize the number.
He set aside the photo book labeled “Afghanistan – 2002-2003” and got up out of the lounge chair and scratched his close shorn beard, vowing to make it at least to the couch the next time he wanted to look at old photos at midnight. Dolly lifted her head off the spiral Indian-weave rug where she lay napping and watched him as he worked the kinks out of his tight back. The Brittany spaniel let out a faint whine with a bit concern in her eyes, as he stretched his back.
“It’s okay, girl,” he twisted left and right at the waist, sighing. “Just a little stiff from that damn chair.” Falling asleep in his c
hair after a long day made him feel closer to fifty than forty the way he stiffened up – of course the booze didn’t help anything. He smiled. He also had those moments though where he felt closer to thirty. Like out bagging a whitetail where you have to run to setup for maybe the only shot you’ll get in three days. Pull off the shot from four hundred yards and you feel like a kid again.
Reality always has a way of pulling you back, however. He had spent darn near all day yesterday replacing a bunch of fence line, and that posthole digger was hell on the back and shoulders. He lost track of how many holes he dug, but his back told him too many. He ran his calloused fingers over his light brown crew cut and rubbed the back of his sunburned neck trying to wake up. Out in the dust, working and sweating had put his mind back to the war, so he indulged himself in a little stroll down memory lane. His throbbing head scolded him for allowing whiskey to come along. Booze was always bad company.
The pager went off again, and he picked it up and moved toward the kitchen. He was starting to regret keeping the thing, but cell phone reception hadn’t been good out in the boonies until really the past couple of years. That’s the way he liked it. Except when Sara would say that the kids needed milk for their cereal and give him that look if he offered any resistance. That always meant a fifteen-minute drive over to Ingram, or even longer to Kerrville if the list was long enough. He loved his place in the Texas hill country – his family had owned the ranch for four generations – but not for its convenience to “civilization” as Sara would say.
The tile floors echoed his footsteps as he moved from the living room to the landline on the kitchen wall. It was that same avocado green Ma Bell wall phone with a fork hanger he used as a kid. He chuckled as he took the little blue address book off the counter. That phone is probably going to outlive me. He lifted up the small cloth off the butcher clock counter, revealing the Sara’s banana bread left over from the barbeque yesterday.
He munched down a couple of slices of the sweet bread and perused several pages of the address book but didn’t find a matching number. Two calls inside of a few minutes isn’t a coincidence. He snatched the old handset off the hook and dialed the number.
The phone rang once and was picked up, “Dos Lunas, can I help you?” The guy who answered had a low, west Texas drawl. Country music echoed in the background, too loud to be a restaurant.
“I just got a page from this number….and…uh...the name’s Nick Brodie.” He had not expected a business, and he fumbled for the right words.
“Yeah, hold on a second…” After a bit of noise, Brodie could hear over the music “Hey buddy, it’s your friend – guy named Brodie.”
“Hey Brodie, it’s Charlie.” He recognized the voice of Charlie Duggan immediately. He was an old friend from the shooting club that Nick hadn’t seen in a month. Charlie’s wife knew Sara from church or home schooling groups.
“Hey Charlie, you been drinking? You have any idea what time it is?”
“Yeah, yeah. Sorry, but I had to call you. Dennis Evans and I are here, and there is some serous crap going on down on the border.” Charlie said rapidly. “I didn’t want to wake the whole family, so I used the old pager number I had for you. I think the balloon is finally going up.”
“Balloon going up? I think you better call it a night, Charlie,” Brodie laughed. “You sound like you may have had one too many.”
“I’m serious, man. You need to turn your TV on and check it out.” Charlie was panting, and Brodie could hear a few gasps and an ‘oh crap’ in the near background. “Dennis said I should call you and Mike Simmons, and Joe Calderon. He’s called a few others from the gun club too. I think he’s talking to Mac Harris right now.”
“What are you talking about Charlie?” asked Brodie.
“I’m watching it on TV. There’s a freakin’ war going on in McAllen.”
*****
Texas State Guard – Domestic Operations - Command, Intelligence and Control Center
Austin, Texas - July 5th, 2017 – 2:55 a.m.
“We’ve lost El Paso, sir.” The young airman’s voice was firm, yet somber as if he was telling his kid brother their dog had died.
“Hell’s bells…,” Brigadier General Hobart “Hum” Dinger muttered to himself, rubbing his temples for a moment with calloused fingers. The heads of a few nearby analysts swiveled on their shoulders at Kowalsky’s words, but rapidly went back to their own screens.
In all his thirty-three years in the U.S. Air Force and Texas Air Guard, Dinger never thought he would see the day when Texas would be giving up soil. He rose from his perch on the old desk and grabbed the can of Skoal from his front pocket, putting in a small chunk of the chew. He sighed and sat back down, trying to exorcise the demonic throbbing that had taken over his head from being up for thirty-six hours, getting by on coffee and his tobacco habit.
The young enlisted man looked over his shoulder momentarily at the CIC Director returning his eyes back on his computer screen quickly, and wiping away the sweat from his upper lip. His desk phone buzzed and relief passed behind his eyes as he picked up the phone, “C-I-C, Airman Kowalsky here.”
The Command, Intelligence and Control Center of the Texas Guard was buzzing with energy over the developments of the last few hours. While technically a Texas Air Guard facility, the CIC was a joint operation between the Texas Guard and the U.S. military. It was on alert status, with twice the level the normal level of personnel – some thirty enlisted U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army personnel as well as a half-dozen officers entrusted with providing real-time intelligence and operational control to various U.S. and Texas military commands. They started the day with a skeleton staff, which consisted of half their normal numbers because of the long weekend. All that changed very fast when the first reports of problems began.
The facility was far from the impressive Hollywood image of wall-sized screens and whirlwinds of panicked suits passing paper to one another; rather it was a fairly staid, large office replete with 1970s-style steel desks, buzzing fluorescent lighting and grayed linoleum. Despite the antiquated ambiance, the room was flush with renewed vitality the likes of which it had rarely displayed in Dinger’s three years as Director. And that was not good. Dinger preferred it nice and quiet. He had had enough action in the Gulf War to last a lifetime, and now preferred to ease quietly though his last few months to retirement. It was not to be on that night. Somebody had certainly stirred a damn hornet’s nest.
General Dinger rose from the nearby desk and walked closer to the bank of six airmen and Army specialists monitoring desktop computer screens for ongoing satellite imagery and visual intel. Overhearing Kowalsky’s report, a lean, black Army Major cut off his conversation with another airman and made his way toward Kowalsky, rapidly scanning the papers he had just been handed. He saw his XO emerge from his office, and he motioned to him.
“What are the latest reports, Major Theroux?” Dinger watched as the tall, mocha-skinned officer moved toward him, reading the top sheet of a handful of papers, “How in the holy hell have we lost El Paso?”
*****
Downtown
Austin, Texas - July 5th, 2017 – 3:15 am
Callie Morgan sat up in bed at the sound of another police siren. She always had trouble sleeping in the days leading up to a big court date, and tomorrow certainly qualified. Playing with the gold cross that lay on her chest, Callie glanced at the clock: scratch that – court was today. The city was more alive than usual, and not in a good way, either. She got up and walked to the fridge, grabbed a sparkling water from the door and cracked it open. The air was chilly on her bare legs, and she scooped up a crocheted quilt from the edge of her iron bed and threw it around her. She wandered across the sparsely furnished loft and peered out the big picture window over downtown, pushing her auburn locks away from her face. She could hear the familiar bass beat of Stumpy’s across the street, and there were more than a few folks moving up and down Colorado Avenue. Strange to be so active on Tuesday night
. Probably just Independence Day winding down.
The capitol was visible past the Tribune building even at night. She always found a little peace when she looked at that dome. She pulled the blanket closer around her as she stood admiring the majesty of the illuminated statehouse against the night sky. She loved Austin and had always wanted to live here ever since she was little. She occasionally thought that maybe she ought to move out to the suburbs now that she was thirty, but the scene downtown was just too alive, too cool. Even though she had grown fonder of the piano bars over the last few years than the head-banging dives or country bars Austin is known for, she still loved downtown because of its energy and ambience.
She was torn from her reverie as another police car below raced north, and she thought she heard firecrackers off in the distance. Her phone buzzed at her bedside table, so she scooted across the hardwood to pick it up. It was Solicitor General Meacham himself. This cannot be good.
She answered and Meacham didn’t pause for pleasantries. His normally gravelly drawl was quick and direct. “Callie, I need you to come to the Governor’s residence as soon as you can.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’ll fill you in when you get here.” The seriousness of his tone was expected, but it was the urgency that floored her. Bill Meacham had stood in front of the Texas Supreme Court dozens of times, and wasn’t the type to get flustered. This was the first time she had ever heard her boss have anything but a calm, calculating demeanor. “Your cell phone isn’t worth the risk in any event. Just get yourself here.”
“I’ll be there in ten,” she said, hanging up. She scanned the room for the gray suit jacket she had worn yesterday, and threw on the slacks that still lay at the foot of the bed. Cell phone isn’t worth the risk, she repeated to herself. She bit her lip a little as she hurried to the closet for a blouse and heels. I don’t like the sound of that.