by T I WADE
“He was ordered to get the three new men to a farmhouse several miles out of town, and he was to come with them. It was time to get rid of the new Federalis, the gang boss told them. The meeting was to take place two nights later and if it didn’t go according to plan, he and his wife would be buried quicker than scheduled.”
“Was it dangerous for your mother?” asked Carlos, noticing that they had driven across the whole state of Illinois while his father was telling the story.
“Of course, but she was one mean lady, remember, and she told me it was so exciting. Anyway, a special company of 100 troops had been especially prepared and trained in gang warfare to back us up. I was still one of the new policemen and several of the original, but we thought good policemen were still there and they had been questioned about seeing me in town. They did not know what was going on, and we had kept them out of the loop on purpose, in case there was a spy among them. Word still got back to the gang boss that a couple of us had been hanging around the police station and had talked to the old police chief, so we knew we had to be careful. It took just six hours to get 50 men into positions around the farmhouse and then we arrived at the old, open gate. The four of us had made sure that there was nobody living there, and we hung around in the police car until dusk. Then we saw lights approaching from behind the house. It was just after sunset, and the scene was just like out of a movie. Several cars came over the hill at once, mostly open jeeps and trucks with men and guns everywhere.”
“We waited until they started shooting in our direction, about 50 yards away, before we swung the idling car around and headed back the way we came, bullets going everywhere. It didn’t look like our ‘police chief’ was going to be spared in the attack and we had predicted it. An American Huey gunship came over the horizon, loaned to us from our friend in the U.S. Air Force, a Major Pete Allen, and the Huey and our ground troops blew the trucks and the whole gang to bits within 30 seconds. There was not one body left intact out of the 32 that we could count. A couple of our guys had also hidden in the police chief’s house with my mother, and three of the gang silently crept in through an open window. With the help of a silencer, they were dead before they even suspected that it was a trap. My mother was mean, had wanted blood, and she shot two of the three before the backup guys got the last one.”
“She shot them? She was sleeping in bed with a gun?” asked Carlos.
“That’s right, son, she left the bathroom window unlatched for them. For the next year, we did the same to six of the seven gangs, and also found two of the original policemen who were working for the gang leader who shot my father. This remaining gang leader was getting a little worried. He had been left alone and was still living in our old house with over 50 men and dozens of women. He had killed several of our laborers, and the rest had been forced to work the fields, with three dying from malnutrition. We knew he also had another 60 or so men living on several other farms he had commandeered after killing my father. Every year, he flew into the United States once or twice to do business, and we could never find out how he got there. While we were there, one of our men had been killed and another had been wounded, so we were down to only ten, including my mother. She was scared that the gang leader would recognize her, so she stayed away from our farm.”
Manuel paused for a moment, as if reflecting on what had happened so long ago, and then pushed on with the story.
“It was now well-known that the new police chief in town was not going to become one of the bad guys. Too many gangs had disappeared over the last several months, and the gangs knew it had something to do with the new chief. Twice they tried to kill him, but his bulletproof vest saved him once and his ‘wife’ saved him another time when they were attacked during the night. He and I always slept in the lounge, always waiting for an attack, and again it came through the bedroom window.”
“She was a crack shot and slept very lightly. We decided to interrogate one of the bad police officers before he was sent up to Medellin. They got him to spill that his gang leader was arranging drug pickups in the United States and he was planning to be gone in the very near future. Nobody knew where he went to fly out of Columbia, but the narc thought south, across the border to Ecuador. He always traveled with a dozen of his best men and was usually gone for a week or two. The men all left at different times and maybe the bank could shed more light on it. He was right. Our assistant manager did a survey of all the accounts the branch had, and within a week came up with a three-year schedule of when money moved in and out of certain accounts. Most of these accounts belonged to old ladies who he had actually met, real people, and all were pretty secure with family money. One account was of interest, however. A couple of large payments were deposited into the account once or twice a year, and then smaller amounts were transferred out of the account and into a couple of other accounts in the same branch that also were owned by a couple of old ladies.”
“That money was taken out in cash by the old ladies themselves a few days later at different times and disappeared. Then the deposit remaining in the first account disappeared a day or two later.”
“Maybe it was the gang members’ mothers,” suggested Carlos, with the miles now flying by.
“Very good,” was his father’s reply. “Maybe my mother wasn’t the only mean mother in the world,” Manuel laughed. “Well, it was ten days later when the same schedule started occurring. We monitored it and then attacked the other farms a day after the account went back to zero. This time we had our complete backup unit—three helicopters loaned to us by our American friend; Major Allen—and we had five farm-houses to deal with. We got all of the gang members and used silenced weapons in case the noise could be heard at our old farmhouse. We lost three soldiers, but killed over 70 male gang members and five females who picked up weapons to fire at us. As soon as the major attack was completed, we dropped our team, fresh from the fighting, around the entrance to our old farmhouse. It was quiet and there was no movement until just after dawn when a truck came down the road. This time, my mother was with us and she stood in the middle of the entrance with typical farmer’s clothes on and waved it down. The truck stopped. Three men got out, swaggered over to my mother shouting awful things at her for being in their way. The driver was shot with a rifle that had a silencer, while he sat there waiting. The truck’s engine was still running and the other three all tried to grab my mother and push her around without hearing the gunshot behind them.”
“My mother recognized one of them from the day my father was shot, she told me afterwards. She pulled out her pistol, shot the other two, and then shot the man she recognized in both knees. My mother stood over him with her gun pointing at his head while he screamed. She forced him at gunpoint to tell her how many gang members were left at the farm, where the leader was, and when was he going to get back. He tried not to tell her, but my mother put a bullet within an inch of his now open legs and he quickly told her what she wanted. Finally, she asked him if he remembered who she was. He nodded and tried to smile at her. She put a bullet right through his forehead.”
“WOW!” breathed Carlos, amazed. “She was one bad mama!”
“I told you,” Manuel replied before continuing. “We quickly surrounded the farmhouse and took the four men captive that were sleeping. One of the helicopters landed, this time with an American CIA agent in it, and they took the bound men back to Medellin. We were all in radio contact for that operation. We found out later that the information the Americans got out of these men (two were colleagues of the leader who killed my father) shut down a large drug operation in Texas a few months later. Somehow, word about that got out.”
“There were five of us waiting for the old leader to return to the farmhouse. We parked the truck out front and waited with our backup several hundred yards behind the house in three of the old barns. After three days of waiting, there came a rush of a dozen or so jeeps and trucks from three different directions in front of the house. It was just after breakfast, a
nd the attack came from nowhere. We were well-prepared, however, and had trip wires with mines planted just in case. I saw three vehicles blow up before they got into the circular driveway in front of the house, but at least another 20-30 men attacked from the driveway. We fired like madmen, and many of them went down. Several got to the porch and started throwing grenades through the windows.”
“The grenades killed a couple of our guys before our backup could be heard behind the house. Our poor commander was one of them. Three of us overturned our thick wooden dining-room table and jumped behind it before the first grenade went off. When they made their final attack through the door, I killed a couple and my mother got one or two as she always did. Suddenly, my mother was hit and I saw her go down just as I got a bullet in my upper leg. We continued to shoot back until the men ceased to come through the door and we could hear our backup men shouting from outside. It hurt like crazy, but I hobbled over to my mother. She was hit in the stomach and sitting up with the table behind her, smiling at me for the first time in many years. She looked at me and said “That was the most fun I’ve had in years!”
“I called for the soldiers outside to come in. My mother ordered them to pick her up and help us outside. There were bodies everywhere. A group of injured men lay by a jeep that looked like a pepper pot because of all the bullet holes in it. She asked the men to carry her over to each dead body, one at a time, and turn them over if they were lying on their stomachs. It took a couple of minutes to look each dead gang member in the face. Then she asked the men to carry her over to the three wounded gang members sitting by the calendar-looking jeep. A soldier was helping me follow her, and I counted at least seven of the faces that had been burned into my memory that day years earlier. There were another two I remembered well sitting up against the jeep. One was the now old white-haired man who had shot my father. My mother looked at him for a long time before he spoke to her. There was nothing but silence with dozens of soldiers looking on. Not a leaf moved. My mother still had her gun in her hand and, with help she found the strength to stand. I could see that she was losing strength and the gun barrel was pointing down at the ground.
‘You should never have come back,’ the old gang leader quietly told her. ‘I knew the woman involved in these attacks was you searching for me. I have already ordered my colleagues to search for you and your children, and you will soon all be dead.’
My mother just stared at him in silence.
‘I have friends in the government… in Medellin. It won’t take long to find you.’
The man next to him coughed up blood and gave her a wicked grin and tried to give her the finger. I watched as the gun barrel lifted and one silenced shot went through the front of his head. The old gang leader next to the now dead body did not even flinch, but kept his eyes on her like an eagle. The man next to him just fell forwards and one of the soldiers pulled the corpse away from the jeep.
‘And now it’s just me,’ the old man smiled at my mother. ‘Remember, you might kill a branch of the tree, but you cannot kill the whole tree, and the tree is going to come back and kill you and your young boy here. I remember him well. He and his sister are going to die young. Very soon, the tree is now angry.’
‘This is what I have promised my husband in my prayers and I now fulfill my promise to the only man I ever knew,’ replied my mother. She was suddenly racked by coughing and she spewed blood.
‘I doubt either of us will make it to heaven, José Calderón, but I hope I’m going where you are going, because my anger will burn for eternity.’ With that, she fired the last three bullets in her gun, first in each knee, waited for the pain to register and his smile to die, and then sending her final bullet between his eyes before keeling over to be caught by two men. She lay on the ground on her back and looked up into my eyes. ‘Your girlfriend Sentra is waiting for you and she is pregnant. I know that, but you don’t know that yet. Carlos, my boy, marry her quickly and allow my grandchild to be born in Columbia. Tell the authorities what Calderón said here today. Warn all my family.’
She coughed several times and lay still for a few seconds. ‘Your uncle Philippe Rodriquez will know what to do and will help you get out of Columbia. Sell our farm. Philippe has the real papers. Promise me, and kiss my crucifix, Manuel, to seal your promise to me. I take promises very seriously. It’s in our family. I did as I was told.’ She died right there, with that satisfied smile back on her face. I closed her eyes gently.”
Carlos had tears in his eyes. He and his mother had been silent for a long time and it was getting dark outside.
“The rest of the story is pretty quick,” his father continued, looking over at his wife. “Your mother told me about you when we got back. I spent time with my Uncle Philippe warning all our family. There were dozens of them, and my sister was the first to be killed a couple of weeks after the death of our mother. It was a simple car accident, but the detective branch, also run by family member in Medellin spent weeks on the accident, found evidence of brake lines being cut and one finger print they found to be a known criminal. That one finger print led to that criminal being interrogated and more names provided. One was a police officer in Medellin. The next was a government official in Bogotá. Then poor Sissie, the only daughter of Uncle Philippe, was attacked and would have been killed if a policeman hadn’t seen the group of boys dragging her into an alleyway. The policeman recognized one of the attackers. The son of a prominent government official, he was found guilty and sent to prison. His father got him released him a few weeks later and the boy went out and killed the policeman. The police then went in and took the father and son into custody and they were both found dead the next morning in their jail cell. Both their throats had been cut.”
“As I told you five years ago, after saving Sissie’s life the hospital revealed that she was six months pregnant and hiding the fact from her father. He was not happy about it. When you were born, I asked her to become your nurse, but Uncle Philippe was a very strict man. My life—our life—was definitely in danger. We left for America with everything we had, even the money we got for my parents’ farm. All together it was enough for us to live well in America for a number of years. Thanks to your Grandfather Carlos, your education was paid for a long time ago.”
“Did any of our family die after we left?” asked Carlos as the sun set over the horizon. It was time to find a motel for the night and refuel the car.
“A few weeks after we left, the ranch house we had been living in was blown up. Then somebody made the mistake of trying to kill Uncle Philippe. He got really mad and started a massive government investigation, which made him very unpopular. He told me that they got the main part of the ‘tree’ that Calderón had hinted at. The ‘tree’ was a very powerful government minister, and not liked by many. He was about to flee the country when they caught him in Bogotá International Airport getting on a really fancy private Italian jet with about 20 heavily trained bodyguards. There was a big firefight and the Special Forces who went after him had no choice but to blow up the aircraft and everyone in it. Nobody from Italy ever questioned the missing jet, and Uncle Philippe told me years ago that he thought it was a Mafia-owned aircraft.”
“Where is your Uncle Philippe now?” asked the young boy, ready for a rest from the car journey.
“In Washington at the Columbian Embassy,” answered his father factually. “He is the new Columbian Ambassador to Washington, and I am to become his Chief Liaison Officer.” Carlos looked at his father with his mouth open and said nothing.
* * *
Twelve years later, in 2002, and over a large whiskey in the comfortable lounge of the Columbian Embassy in Washington, Carlos sat with his father and his uncle, the now white-haired Ambassador. The two older men were congratulating him on his recent Ph.D. from MIT in electrical engineering. Carlos was explaining to the two older men that he was not ready to get a job but wanted to start studying for a second Ph.D.—this time in astronomy and global communications—and
maybe get a job with NASA.
“It will only take a few more years, Papa,” Carlos was explaining. “Hey! What job do you want me to do? Be a gas station attendant?” he asked the two older men with his hands outstretched. They laughed at the grown-up boy. No more quiet Carlos, always thinking and silent.
Carlos had really matured at MIT and now was a very confident pilot who flew hundreds of hours a year. He also stood tall at one inch over six feet. His father really enjoyed his son’s company whenever he came to visit them in the Embassy, once or twice a year. Manuel had never seen anybody work as hard as his son did. Aging and now white-haired, Uncle Philippe was also proud and also looked forward to the visits. The guy was becoming quite a comedian. They were about to go out for dinner to a really good Columbian restaurant in Georgetown.
Carlos’ mother had died a couple of years earlier from cancer, and it had taken him several months to get over it. Manuel thought that it would hurt his son’s studies, but Carlos had just worked harder to soften the pain.