“But an FBI agent? My son is being raised by federal agents? That’s twisting the knife. You have to be kidding, this is just a joke, this can’t be true, can it? It’s just not fair, it’s not right!”
“But they can give him everything, and what can you offer him, in here? Nothing. Ranya, please be realistic, and think of what’s best for your son. The FBI…” Linssen reached again to take Ranya’s hands in hers, to calm her, to sooth her.
Ranya looked up and flung her own hands apart, casting off the warden’s offered comforting gesture. Her five years of smoldering frustration over not knowing the fate of her son had at last been settled, but the hollow aching pain was instantly replaced by a rolling wave of burning anger. Five years of seething resentment crystallized into blind rage. Her hands, strong and callused from the fields, shot to Linssen’s throat. Her long fingers encircled the warden’s neck as Ranya exploded forward, propelling the warden backward in shocked surprise.
Linssen’s mouth was wide open in amazement as her own hands sought Ranya’s wrists beneath her chin, when the back of her head slammed down on the protruding bathtub faucet. Then Ranya was over her, straddling her, still shaking and choking her, Linssen’s terrified blue eyes disappearing beneath the fragrant bubbles.
“The FBI! The FBI! You feds, you feds think you own the whole world and everything in it! Steal a baby? Why not! Take five years of my life? Who cares! ‘National Security,’ right? Right! You own everything, don’t you? Well, that’s it! That’s—it! Enough! Too much! No more! No more! And I’m not a traitor! I’m not a traitor, damn you!” Ranya continued strangling Linssen under water, with all of her 130 pounds bearing down on the helpless warden’s throat, crushing her larynx.
Whether it was after one minute or much longer, she would never know, but eventually Ranya comprehended that Starr Linssen was not struggling, was not moving at all. No carotid artery pulse surged through her neck against Ranya’s pressing thumbs. No desperate fingers clawed at her wrists. When this fatal realization finally struck, Ranya bolted upright and shot out of the tub to escape the warden’s limp body. She dropped and sat Indian-style, naked and wet on the throw rug in the center of the bathroom floor, staring at the warden’s legs, which were partially exposed above the bubbles. Linssen’s slick breasts formed two star-tipped islands surrounded by sudsy foam.
Now she couldn’t go back. There was absolutely no going back to D-camp. There was no explaining away the death of Deputy Warden Starr Linssen, in her own house.
But now she also had a new idea tugging at her, at last she had a real reason to try to escape, regardless of the odds. Assuming that Linssen had been telling the truth, Ranya finally knew where her son was. She had a name to search for, and she knew his “father” was an FBI agent in Albuquerque, and that was enough. If she could escape from D-Camp, and make it to New Mexico…if she could do that, she could find her son, and rescue him from his kidnappers!
Ranya knew that Starr Linssen had planned to spend several intimate hours with her, which meant she probably had these hours to make her escape. It was Friday afternoon, and if Linssen had signed out for the day, then perhaps her presence wouldn’t even be missed before Monday morning. She had the advantage of time, a few hours at least.
Starr Linssen was roughly her size, it occurred to her… She pushed down the lever under the silver faucet, and the tub began to drain. Gradually Linssen’s face came back into view as the bubbles disappeared. Ranya studied the dead woman’s slick black hair, just a bit gray at the roots. She opened the medicine cabinet, then looked under the sink, and found an unopened package of black L’oreal hair dye. It could be done, maybe. It was possible! Anyway, what else could she do? What choice did she have? She knew where her son was living, she knew his new name, and she knew who had stolen him from her life!
****
In less than two hours, Ranya was driving the dead warden’s black pickup back toward the double-box of high chain link and razor wire, which surrounded the back gate leading away from the base. On their way to her house, the warden’s ISA identification card had gotten them through the inner gate leading out of the D-Camp area into the rest of the old Army base. Ranya could only guess if that same ID card would be sufficient to allow her to pass entirely out of the base, and into the civilian world.
Her hair was dyed black and scissors-cut to resemble the warden’s, as closely as Ranya had been able to manage in the bathroom mirror. A sun and moon, approximating the warden’s tattoos, were inked in ballpoint on the sides of her neck. She wore the white blouse and black pants of the dead woman. To defeat the RFID implants in the back of her left shoulder, she had stripped the circular magnet from the speaker of a portable radio, and secured it in place with generous strips of duct tape. Another detainee had explained this trick to Ranya, but she had no way of knowing for sure if the big magnet would override the RFID microcircuits or not. Well, she would find out soon enough…
Ranya wore Linssen’s gold-framed aviator’s sunglasses and a black ball cap with the ISA patch on the front, to obscure her face. She hoped that the gate guards would not study her too closely, but would be basing their judgment on Linssen’s familiar black vehicle with its ISA bumper and windshield decals, and her ISA uniform and ID card. If the warden’s vehicle had any special RFIDs placed in it, Ranya could only hope that they would indicate that it was authorized to depart the base via this back gate. The vehicle gate was already outside of D-Camp, in another part of the old military base, and she hoped that it had less stringent requirements for permitting outward passage. In any event, Ranya had no way of knowing the overall scheme of the security protocols that were in effect.
In case it didn’t work, if the guards became suspicious and stopped her for a close inspection, Ranya had the warden’s Glock 19 pistol, loaded with sixteen 9mm hollow points. She had found it in the locked drawer of the warden’s bedside night table, hidden in a hollowed-out Bible. Now the ugly black pistol lay on the seat beside her right thigh, concealed beneath a copy of “Homeland Security Today” magazine. No matter what happened next, Ranya was finished with D-Camp. She was finished with around-the-clock interrogations, and with months buried alive in solitary confinement, in an underground “supermax” cell. She was finished with troikas of unseen judges, who handed down sentences of “non-judicial detention” from behind face-blurring translucent screens.
She was not going back. Deputy Warden Starr Linssen lay beneath her own bed, wrapped in her shower curtain, strangled and drowned and dead. The Glock pistol beside Ranya’s hip had a round chambered, ready to fire in an instant.
Ranya slowed and made the right turn toward the vehicle gate, her heart hammering inside of her chest. The inner gate rolled back on grating steel rollers with a clank of chains and the whine of an electric motor, and she pulled the little truck inside the inspection zone. One of the two middle-aged guards on duty was sitting on a stool inside of his cement block guardhouse, and he unenthusiastically raised himself up to do his duty. She noted that the service pistol on his belt was hidden beneath the flap of a black nylon holster. It would be no match in speed for her Glock, if they both had to draw in a hurry. Shooting both guards and activating the outer gate from inside their guard house would be a last ditch desperation measure, but she would attempt it if they tried to stop her now.
She held the ISA card up against the side window a yard from another optical scanner on a steel post, the way she had seen Linssen do it, while keeping her eyes forward. It was obvious the truck was empty in the back, and held no passenger other than the authorized driver, the easily recognizable deputy warden of D-Camp. The guard took a step toward the truck, paused just two paces away, stopped for a moment…
And then he waved her forward with a casual flip of his hand.
The outer gate squealed open, and in a moment Ranya was through, bursting forth with immeasurable bounding joy. In seconds, she had the pickup truck going sixty miles an hour on the ruler-straight blacktop, headi
ng south toward Interstate 40.
Ranya Bardiwell was out of D-Camp, but she was still far from free.
Much more of
“Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista”
and Matt’s other novels may be read at
www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com
Novels by Matthew Bracken:
Enemies Foreign And Domestic
A novel about the true meaning of loyalty and the
high cost of freedom in the age of terror. (2003)
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista
A novel about the deconstruction of the American
national identity and the loss of the Southwest. (2006)
Foreign Enemies And Traitors
A novel about defending the Constitution during a
dirty civil war and the Greater Depression. (2009)
Castigo Cay
The first in the Dan Kilmer series, about a former Marine
sniper trying to live as a free man in an unfree world. (2011)
The first hundred pages of each novel may be read at
www.EnemiesForeignAndDomestic.com
Contact Matt at [email protected]
On Twitter @MattBracken48
Matt Bracken on Facebook
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