“What do you think?”
It is Manuel Morales, her squad captain. He approaches from behind the Hummer. Delatorre lowers the binoculars and turns her head to see the large, muscled frame of her fellow Crusader. Like her, he is in a ‘borrowed’ US Border Patrol uniform. His outfit is bookended by cowboy boots and black Stetson. The Fortuna Foothills rise behind him in wavy bands of purple, pink and gray.
“Can we take them?” he asks.
“Piece of pie,” Milagros answers.
Morales laughs. He tips his Stetson back to his hair line.
“The expression is, piece of cake,” he says.
“Cake?” she asks.
Morales nods.
“No pie?”
The Captain shakes his head.
“Why not pie?”
Captain Morales purses his lips in thought. He shakes his head again and finally shrugs.
“You’ll have to ask a gringo. It’s their expression.”
“A pie is easier to make, is just as good to eat as a cake,” Milagros says. “It makes no sense. For you and me it will always be, easy as pie. Okay?”
Manuel Morales concedes with a grin and a shy lowering of his head.
“A piece of pie, it is,” he says.
Milagros smiles down on her Captain from her position on top of the Hummer’s hood. She loves Manuel. His gentleness, she has come to learn, is the product of a heart made fearless by his faith in and his love of God. And so is the power of the man. It was Manuel who led the raiding party that rescued her. She was eighteen years old at the time, malnourished and strung-out by the heroin her brothel keepers used to keep their stable of slaves docile. After her rescue, Morales visited her often during her recovery. He encouraged her return to health with just his smiling presence and his many prayers at her bedside. His help with the language made learning English enjoyable. What Milagros is most grateful for, however, is Manuel’s help in bringing her to Christ. More than anything else it helped to heal the wounds her enslavement opened in her soul.
Morales offers her a hand down. “Cormier sends word, the truck has left Yuma.”
She looks at his wide, long-fingered hand and remembers the first time he offered it to her. It was at the brothel after the raid, when the shooting and the screaming had finally ceased. She recalls flinching at the sight of his open, reaching hand. She retreated from his offer in fear, crawling backward into the corner of the room. She was glad that she did. Had she not, Milagros might never have seen the tender pity that her fear evoked from Manuel’s eyes; she might have missed that first sweet, glimmering inkling that there were other kinds of human beings in the world, beings different than those who made a nightmare of her young life.
Milagros Delatorre takes Manuel Morales’ hand. She hops off the Hummer and lands beside her Captain. The strength of the man is readily readable even in the soft cupping of her fingers in his palm. Manuel’s hands, his arms and every muscled inch of his six foot tall frame were chiseled into Herculean shape by twenty years of bull riding. His body radiates a power every bit as brutish as the beasts he rode, but the light in Manuel’s soft-brown eyes attests to an intelligence that saddles his animal self with an iron discipline. However, as formidable as the mass and the mind of the man appear to others, Milagros believes Manuel’s most powerful feature is his easy, ear-to-ear smile. It was that open-hearted smile of his that helped her climb out of hell.
Their hands remain clasped as they stand in front of the vehicle.
Early in their acquaintance she sensed that Manuel was more than just the soldier and retired bull rider he claimed to be. She asked Padre Negro, the young, diminutive priest Manuel had looking after her and the others.
“Our Manny is a modest man, mi hija,” the priest told her with knowing smile.
“Si, but I can tell there is something special behind the modesty,” she said. “Everybody treats him like he is special. I have eyes. I can see it.”
“What you’re noticing is called hero worship.”
“He’s their hero?”
“Si hija,” the priest answered. “I would guess that he is your hero too. No?”
“Si,” Milagros responded with a smile. “Si, Padre.”
“And not just to the people around here,” the priest went on. “Manuel Morales is a hero to a great many people around the world. And our Manny is also a villain to some people.”
Milagros was taken aback. “Manuel, a villain? No lo creo!”
Padre Negro nodded. “Si, es la verdad. Our Manny is, in fact, a wanted man. He is wanted dead or alive, on both sides of the border.”
“But why, Padre?” she asked.
“Years ago, near the end of the Border War, Manuel killed three men. Politicians,” the priest answered. “Two of them were Mexican and the third was the American Ambassador to Mexico.”
Milagros was silent for a long moment while the information sank in. During her time in captivity she heard only an occasional tidbit and rumor of what went on outside the brothel walls, most of it unintelligible to her young mind. The world and its wars were distant realities to Milagros while she was in the stable of prostitutes. Even now, years after, she was still filling out her understanding of the world and its wicked ways.
“Tell me everything, Padre,” she pleaded, leaning forward to catch every syllable of every word. “Why did he kill them, those politicians?”
Padre Negro paused as he considered where to begin. He crossed his legs, right over left, and smoothed out his cassock with a few, slow passes of his hand.
“You know that our Manny was a bull rider?” asked the priest.
“Si.”
“Do you know that he was more than that? He was, in fact, the world’s greatest bull rider. Lo sabe?” Padre Negro asked.
“He never said that,” Milagros said.
“Of course not,” the priest said with a grin. “He wouldn’t. But he is. The world’s best! Manny is a four-time world champion bull rider. El mejor del mundo! He would have been the first ever, five-time world champion except that Manuel Morales is an even greater Christian than he is a bull rider.”
“What do you mean?” Milagros was engrossed. “What happened?”
“Like many a bull rider,” the small priest continued. “Our Manny is very devout. He always made it a point to thank God every time he finished one of those wild, eight second rides. He would drop to his knees, make the sign of the cross, and then he would point up to heaven, giving God all the thanks and credit for his strength, skill and survival. Lots of riders did similar things and no one minded the displays of faith any more than they minded the backflips, hee-haws and victory dances of other riders. No one minded until the gringos in Washington decided such acts promoted religion in public. The gringos got it in their silly heads that they were going to stop all such displays.”
“What did they do?”
“They warned everyone first, then hit them with fines,” the priest said. “Expensive fines, at that. That was enough to stop most performers and athletes, but not our Manny. He ignored the warnings and wouldn’t pay the fines. The Federalis decided they would make an example of him. The godless gringos sent one of their officers to hand deliver a penalty, publicly, hoping to embarrass Manny. The man from Washington wrote him a ticket for crossing himself in the ring after his first ride of a rodeo in Texas. It was a big mistake on the government’s part. Had they left him alone, I doubt few people outside the bull riding world would have heard of Manuel Morales. Instead the whole world got to see Manny make a fool of the American government.”
“How did he do that?”
The priest smiled and started to answer. His mouth closed as he thought better of it.
“I’ll show you,” he said and pulled out his cellphone.
Padre Negro thumbed a few buttons and handed Milagros the phone.
“Touch the arrow and see for yourself,” Padre Negro said with a widening smile splitting his little head.
Mila
gros did as he instructed and watched the phone’s screen light up with a shot of Manuel Morales sitting atop a bull in the shoot. The still shot became a video and Manny and bull explode out onto the arena. The bull kicks and bucks, heaves and hurls itself into the air as Morales holds on against its monstrous will to be rid of the rider. Manny rides it for a couple of seconds past the buzzer before leaping off the beast. After a shoulder roll that separates him from his black Stetson, he lands on one knee a short distance behind the animal. Morales fights for his breath as the bullfighters corral the animal back into the pen. Manny then drops his second knee to the sands, crosses himself and points heavenward as Padre Negro had described.
Milagros smiled and her eyes watered as she watched him spread his arms wide, close his eyes, mouth a silent prayer, drink in the applause and, what she felt certain was, the love of almighty God raining down on him.
A man in a suit enters the picture then, walking across the sand with two police officers behind him. The applause dies out as the three men close in on Manny. Morales rises to his feet and turns to greet the trio. The man in the suit hands Manuel a slip of paper.
“What is this?” Manny asks.
“It is a fine, Mr. Morales,” answers the man from the government. “You have failed to heed the government’s warning about illegal displays of religion over our public airwaves. We are done issuing warnings.”
Morales looks from the suited man to the officers behind him. They seem embarrassed to be involved. He then looks at the slip of paper.
Manuel’s eyes widen in surprise. “Really? Twenty-five thousand dollars for crossing myself?”
The suit hands him two other slips. “And five thousand each for those,” he adds, pointing to the cross and the Blessed Virgin of Guadalupe stitched into Manny’s chaps. “They are forbidden images.”
“But, they are my best sponsors,” Morales says.
Laughter ripples through the crowd.
The man from the government is not amused. He glares at Morales. Manny folds the slips of papers, nodding thoughtfully. He places them neatly in one pocket of his leather vest and pulls a strand of Rosary beads out of the other.
“How much will it cost me to pray the Rosary?” Morales asks.
Manny doesn’t wait for an answer. He drops back down on his knees, crosses himself and begins reciting the Rosary. The suit is flustered. He grows red with anger and gestures for the officers with him to do something. Grudgingly they move forward, take Morales by the elbows and raise him to his feet. The applause turns to booing. One of the policemen handcuffs Manuel. Even on the small screen, Milagros can see that the cop is apologizing as he does it. Manny’s smile lets him know that there are no hard feelings. The two officers are good enough to let the bull rider keep his Rosary beads as they escort him out of the arena. The crowd chants, Manny! Manny! Manny! The suit is pelted with trash as he exits the arena.
The video stops and returns to the opening still of Manny atop the bull.
When Milagros turned from the phone to the priest there were tears running freely down her cheeks. She would always remember them as her first happy tears. She realized with a burst of heat and light within her breast that she was in love. More than that, she was in love with the greatest of men. She was certain of it! It didn’t matter to her whether Manuel would ever love her in return. It was enough for Milagros that she was finally capable of loving a man after years of seeing them as the source of all the pain and evil in her life. In that instant, the dark hollows which brutality carved out of her soul were filled with a love she had never known or imagined possible. All the fears the world had beaten into her through the long years in the brothel were washed away in mere moments, spilling from her eyes unchecked.
The priest pulled a handkerchief from his cassock and passed it to Milagros, exchanging it for the cellphone in her hand.
“That’s how it began,” Padre Negro went on. “The American government held him in custody overnight and then went on to make a big deal of escorting him back across the border. Even that backfired on them. They had already made a hero of him. A huge crowd showed up to cheer him as he crossed the border. Some American Border Patrol officers even went out of their way to shake his hand as he crossed the Bridge of the Americas. The next season Manny was denied his entry visa to the States. It cost him his chance to compete at the world championship in Las Vegas. His fans were angry, especially because the season was slated to close with Manuel’s match up with Doomsday.”
“Doomsday?”
“Yes,” the Priest said. “He was the ‘invincible bull.’ No one had ever lasted more than five seconds on Doomsday. Three hundred and eleven riders tried before our Manny finally beat him.”
“So Manuel did get to ride the bull?”
“He didn’t want to disappoint his fans,” Padre Negro said after a small laugh. “So Manuel sneaked across the border and surprised everyone when he showed up in Las Vegas on the last day of the championship. Manny held on for nine and a half seconds before Doomsday was able to get rid of him. He beat Doomsday the Invincible! The crowd went crazy and so did the Yankee government, but for different reasons, of course. They sent in a SWAT team to arrest Manuel but he slipped back across the border before they could catch up with him. It would make their heads explode to learn that he was driven back across by the Border Patrol.”
The small Priest laughed harder, reveling in the memory. It was a short burst of mirth and his face quickly took on a more stone-like aspect.
“Things got really bad after that,” he said. “A few months later the nuclear bomb exploded in Panama and within weeks Los Zetas seized power in Mexico. Manny, because of his great popularity, became one of the people’s voices against the military dictatorship. Los Zetas, to silence him, they fire bombed his home. He was in the basement when the rocket exploded in the dining room. Manny survived, but his family… they were killed.”
Milagros inhaled sharply at the revelation.
“His family?” she asked. “I didn’t know.”
“He doesn’t like to talk about it,” the Priest said. “His wife, a son and three daughters were killed in the blast.”
Milagros was silent for a long time.
“These politicians,” she said at last. “They were responsible for the killing of his family?”
The priest nods.
“And the American?”
“He was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Padre Negro said. “But he was no innocent. He was picking up a brief case full of money from those murderers when Manuel and his men broke into their lair. There was a firefight. The politicians and the three soldiers guarding them were all killed. There was a video camera in the room the Mexicans were using to secretly tape the exchange. It got out soon after the killing. The US government never explained why their ambassador was picking up the briefcase with five hundred thousand dollars. They didn’t care to explain it. That was curious, to say the least. They dismissed it as an unimportant detail. All they cared about was making Manny pay for killing their diplomat. So they branded Morales a terrorist. The Mexicans and the Americans both put a price on his head. Manny has been living underground since then.”
Milagros Delatorre looks Manuel Morales over and reflects on how much more she has since learned about the man. Every facet and every detail of his life has enriched hers beyond measure. In a couple of hours she will join her fate to his and they will begin their life together in earnest. The thought lights a fire in her heart.
“Time to cowboy up,” Morales says jumping into the driver’s seat of the open-top Hummer.
“Is that another gringo expression?” she asks, climbing into the passenger seat.
“Si.”
Milagros takes her seat beside him. “What does it mean?”
Manny makes a fist. “It means it is time to get tough and strong and do what needs doing.”
She hammers his fist with her own. “Cowboy up!”
Morales guns the Hummer’s
motor. “Los Cristeros ride again!”
“Arriba! Arriba!” she bellows over the roar of the engine.
Manuel throws his head back and laughs.
The Hummer spits out a plume of dust into the twilight as they race down the foothills of dusk-purpled mountains to the blacktop of Interstate 8.
San Diego, California
20:08:11
Holly Villa is vice-President of the United States.
Two husbands and three alienated children were left in the wake of her rise to power, strewn among the long trail of competitors and broken enemies. She began her career as a lawyer for the ACLU and served two terms as a Senator for her native California before being tapped to run with William O’Neill. When she was brought on board, O’Neill had lauded her as the hardest working Senator on The Hill, but Villa knew that it was more than her celebrated work ethic that he was counting on. He needed her to secure the Hispanic vote. As one of the Senate authors and chief champion of the Alien Resident Enfranchisement Act, she did just that and she did it handedly. The O’Neill-Villa ticket changed the political map. With its help the Democrats swept the entire south, from California to Florida. At fifty-five years of age, the Presidency is within her reach. She has but to serve one more term with O’Neill before she can begin her own campaign to succeed him.
And while the presidency of the United States of America would be considered by most to be the ultimate achievement, Holly Villa has plans to carry her far beyond the Oval Office. In the southwest, a new Hispanic nation is emerging, one that is neither Mexican nor American and more than a mere hybrid of the two. Calls for its independence have been gathering in number and strength, and it is Villa’s greatest ambition to answer them by becoming the new nation’s founding mother.
The House of War: Book One Of : THE OMEGA CRUSADE Page 17