by Don Shift
Water went down his nose and filled his nasal cavities. From there, it seeped into his throat. The panic Gabriel was feeling became an instinctual struggle to survive. He bucked his body, trying to get his head up enough so that the water would drain out of his head. As Sam's voice faded and unconsciousness approached, Gabriel knew that he would say anything to stop this from happening again.
Waterboarding's success is that it triggers the most elemental reaction of all: the will to survive where nothing but the next breath mattered. A man can stand beatings, incredible pain, cold, hunger, and humiliation, but he cannot fight dying over and over again. Sam had seen Iraqi intelligence officers pull fingernails out with pliers while men refused to talk but break completely after a few minutes of waterboarding. As horrible as it was to watch a man suffer (and more so for the one causing the suffering), he was amazed by it and never forgot the lesson.
Twenty minutes later, Gabriel told everything he knew, and Sibley’s notebook was full of information. Other than the sex slave trailer village, few of the details were shocking. The size and scope of the plan was monstrous and frightening, but also cunning and devilishly forward thinking.
“You guys are going to let me go now, right?”
“Sure thing guy.” Sibley lied as he put a suppressed bullet in the prisoner’s head.
“Now what?” Sam asked.
“Shovel and shut up.”
Fun with Drones
The dispatch delivered by the Sibley boys from Sam and Sibley was enough to get Sheriff Villareal and Captain Tejada, the SWAT captain and chief of Todd Road security, to ride away from the jail. Along with Sam and Sibley, the four rode over to the Hidalgo ranch. Luther Washington, a Green Beret and Hidalgo’s chief of security met them along with his intelligence team and deputy chief. Sam, who had experience with military intelligence, was put in the lead.
“Okay gentlemen. As you are aware, last night we conducted a reconnaissance in force of suspects believed to be involved with looting and the murders of the Anderson and Sanchez families. Several bad guys were killed. Collateral damage involved two females that attacked us in defense of their men. Based on that night’s action and the drone flight, we determined that several shooters lived in the neighborhood you see on the screen.” Even with EMP, PowerPoint presentations were still a thing.
“We captured and interrogated a suspect who unfortunately died of his wounds sustained in the firefight.” None of the professionals believed it—maybe the ham guys and the computer tech—but no one cared. “The information gained is disturbing.” Sam clicked the slide and the high points showed up on the screen. “Sinaloa cartel elements already present in Southern California have organized into regional groups, centered on multiple unknown areas, with the express purpose of dominating the population, seizing resources, and scavenging for valuable items. More on that in a sec.
“They are concentrating on areas with very high Hispanic, particularly illegal Mexican and Central American populations. Due to poverty, culture, and conditioning within cartel-controlled homelands, they feel these areas are perfect place to conduct a base of operations. Two such areas, besides Oxnard, are Santa Maria and Salinas, which you know are very similar to Oxnard. Our prisoner was unaware of other areas but did make it known that Santa Paula and Fillmore/Piru are areas of interest locally.
“Todd Road and the foot patrols in the area are the main deterrent followed by the Army/National Guard elements up the canyon at Thomas Aquinas. You need to assume you are being watched. I couldn’t get more out of him, but there was some mention of the bridges over the river. Those are obvious choke points and as you have pointed out previously, hotly contested control points by bandits.
“Moving on, the overall plan is two-fold. First, to establish some sort of area of influence that can serve the cartel’s interests. Imagine a sort-of feudal kingdom controlled by one or several powerful cartel members as the overseers. Second, the commercial aspect has switched from importing illegal narcotics to treating theses areas as one large salvage yard. Anything of value is being stolen for export. Jewelry, antiques, desired cars that can be easily restored to working order—we all know that stolen luxury vehicles are exported to South America and the Middle East. Nothing has changed, except the difficulty is not with Customs, but getting the cars to run and go south of the border.
“I don’t know if the Chinese are actually involved or not; I think our suspect was speculating. You have heard the rumors as I have that China was also nuked or hit by EMP. It is clear that large, foreign actors, either national or private, have designs on salvaging what they can from our dead cities. At the moment, it is small-time stuff, but should there be a large nation capable of draining what’s left of the corpse, we gotta pray the overseas portion of our military can defend us.
“Continuing, operations are expanding. The horsemeat raids were to feed civilians who are the manual labor in this scheme. Because the population is still at about 60%, there is too much resistance among the white and long-naturalized, middle class Hispanic populations. That means too many people with guns that might fight back or otherwise cause trouble live in places like Camarillo. Malibu also still has one or two cops or ex-soldiers living in each mansion’s guesthouse. While they wait for people to die off and make less resistance, preparations for long-term survival are being made.
“We observed a water transportation system which was basically a big plastic water tank put on a wheeled cart that several men pulled in a team like horses. Our suspect explained that the men who pull it are basically slaves. Many others are employed in rehabbing and cultivating the farm fields in the area. Irrigation ditches are being dug, extended, or re-routed to provide water from the local wells in the area.”
“Slaves?” Hidalgo asked.
“Yes. It gets worse. The fifth wheel we watched them steal was housing for female sex slave harem.” The men gasped. “There is a small collection of them near a farm the cartel took over. About one hundred sicarios live there and serve as the enforcers. Our source believes that the women are for their use.”
“This explains the reports of automatic gunfire and heavily armed men in Oxnard for the last couple of months from the Seabees,” Villareal said.
“Sheriff, are you aware of the sealift from Port Hueneme?” Washington said.
“No, I am not.”
“Two months ago, many of the non-essential military personnel and their families were evacuated to Camp Pendleton where the Navy and Marines have secured the general area.”
“Did they deliver any aid?”
“From my contacts at the base, only mainly what amounts to a combat resupply mission. The forces at both bases are generally defensive forces keeping the bases from being overrun.”
Villareal threw up his hands. “I guess those shortwave broadcasts from the President about the world’s ships coming to our aid meant nothing.”
Washington didn’t have a comment.
Sam cleared his throat. “Moving on, our working proposal is to simply marshal what forces we do have and eliminate the cartel threat. Even if we cannot outright defeat them in Southern California, we may be able to destroy their operation here and send the signal that Ventura County is our territory.”
“With what army are you preparing to take on one hundred sicarios? You know most of them have been involved in one form of combat or another, right?” Tejada protested.
“Captain, this is no different than fighting the Taliban, who were experienced fighters, yes, but lacked the advantages we had,” Sam said.
“Oh, like airpower? Artillery? Overwhelming numbers?”
Washington jumped in. “Yes Captain, we had those things as well, but what Sam is getting at is that we are professionals. We have the advantage of training, night vision, thermal gear, and if the Army cooperates, overwhelming firepower from the Strykers. We strike at a time of our choosing and catch them unaware.”
“You’re being optimistic.”
“S
ir, the wells in Camarillo and Ventura are controlled by friendly police, prison guards, and current/former military. Again and again, local gangs have challenged the guys standing guard and each time, they have been driven off or the wells retaken with minimal casualties. I know that the cartel is more than just the rag-tag assholes we’ve seen here and there, but if we plan it out, I think we can be successful.”
Villareal noticed all the eyes in the room were on him. “Why are you all looking at me?”
“You’re the senior man in the room, and in the county, unless the board of supervisors are still meeting somewhere.”
The sheriff made the sign of the cross in the air and shook his hand like a priest dispensing holy water. “You have my blessing.”
One of the ham radio operators raised his hand. “You can speak Carl,” Hidalgo said. “You don’t have to raise your hand.”
“Thanks. Hi everybody, I run the signal intelligence here. You wouldn’t know it from looking at me but I’m a retired spook. After I got back from Vietnam, I got a job working as a radio tech for the NSA. In the ‘80s, I went over to the feds. Until a few years ago, I still consulted for them and local law enforcement. Anyhow, we’ve been listening to these guys, but until today, it didn’t make much sense.”
Carl pointed to a TV and switched it to show his computer display with a map of the area. “See these red dots?” The dots appeared and faded as time passed. “We’ve triangulated radio signals using our two antennas and with some help from hams around the county. These are violent incidents. You can see the switch from random to systematic and the pattern in Oxnard. Now, look at the green dots. These are ‘administrative’ radio calls. See how they center around this area off of Rice Road?
“If the Internet was still up, I could do an overlay on Google Earth so you could see the satellite images. A lot of this traffic I can now tie back to these guys. What they’ve been talking about is in line with what your young man just explained.”
“Are you sure it’s them?” Washington asked.
“Positive. They talk like cartel guys and use the same slang. We’ve also intercepted shortwave radio traffic. I don’t have a map for this because propagation makes it much trickier to triangulate these signals with the grid being down. The transmissions originate in the county and most of the people they’ve been talking to have been coming from far to the south, several hundred miles based on the atmospheric skip, so Mexico.”
“Nice Carl, thanks,” Sam said. “So we know and have confirmed who, where, and why, but we still don’t know the how and when for our own attack.”
“You’re right. We need more intel.”
The problem with sending people in on foot was that the area was surrounded by miles of flat farmland. At night, one or two men might make it close to the farm, but it would be difficult to see and escape if detected they would be over open ground crisscrossed by roads. A drive-by was out of the question; it was an excellent way for the vehicle to be lit up. Hidalgo had aerial photos of the county taken a little less than a year ago, but that only told them what the area looked like before the pulse.
“Well we can’t just recon it in force again, not with a hundred sicarios,” Sibley said.
“Why not drones again?” Washington suggested.
“Because they’ll notice and wonder what’s up,” Tejada asked.
“Sir, they know something is up already. All it takes is one witness who can describe someone with a sheriff’s patch they forgot to sanitize off their gear or the Bearcat with ‘sheriff’ painted on the hood.”
“Can the drones fly at night?” Villareal asked.
“Of course they can. They just can’t see without streetlights or ambient light. Wrong time of the month for moonlight too. None of us have a thermal camera for them, I take it,” Hidalgo said. He had held off purchasing one, choosing instead to wait until the next generation of live-streaming drone FLIR cameras came out in January. “Any idea where the search and rescue drones went, sheriff?”
Villareal shook his head.
“I’ll talk to my partner to get his thoughts and Alex, I’ll let you know the plan so you can tell your drone guy,” Sibley said.
The recon mission started sooner than anticipated. The next morning was an overcast one where the marine layer penetrated deep inland. Sibley woke Mr. Palmer and drug him outside in his pajamas.
“The ceiling is less than a thousand feet. This is perfect! Go get David.”
The Palmers did not share their landlord’s zeal. David had been up until two on watch. The three men climbed in the Jetta with the drone, some MREs for lunch, and headed out. They were met in Oxnard by two of Hidalgo’s men with their drone already in the loading dock of a deserted warehouse of some kind.
With daybreak, the first drone lifted off and disappeared in the cloud deck, navigating by dead reckoning. A compass heading, altitude, and distance was all they really needed. Five minutes later, the drone descended out of the clouds a little more than one thousand feet over the cartel’s compound. Being so high in the fog it was unlikely the gray unmanned aircraft would be spotted. If anyone heard the slight buzzing, it was far enough away that the sound could be coming from anywhere and liable to be confused with ordinary sounds.
“Look at all those trailers.” Fifty to sixty trailers, motorhomes, and fifth wheels sat in a line of two rows in the middle of the fields. Big pickups were parked nearby. The area looked like a high-class campground with fire pits, patio furniture, and shiny gas grills assembled in the dirt. Several men sat around a fire, drinking beer and grilling horse meat for breakfast.
“Must be the sicarios.”
The drone hovered overhead for another ten minutes before the battery was down to one-third. Mr. Palmer turned it back and landed it. In order to avoid a potential constant buzz of drone rotors, the next mission wouldn’t launch for twenty minutes.
Hidalgo’s drone overflew the perimeter next, zooming in looking for gaps in the fence. The property was surrounded by a low fence covered in plastic that served as more of a windbreak than anything else. The gaps were now strung with a few strands of barbed wire, but no barricades. To the south, a housing tract bordered the fields. As a rule most of the fields were an unruly mess of weeds and plants gone to seed. Only an area nearest to the water seemed to be cultivated, although a tractor was out plowing old strawberry furrows under.
A road that had formerly dead ended in a field was now connected to the compound.
“Holy crap. That’s the neighborhood we hit the other night! I had no idea it was so close. How the heck did we make it out of there alive?”
“Good thing we flew that first drone mission in from the other direction,” Mr. Palmer said.
A smaller cluster of ten trailers was found behind a double set of chain-link fences of the kind used to temporarily close construction sites. An armed guard sat outside the gate. A woman knelt over a washbasin in front of a trailer doing her laundry.
“The harem,” Hidalgo’s drone operator said.
“Pieces of shit. It’s a goddamn rape factory.”
By the time the sun began to weakly burn through the marine layer, the compound had been fully reconnoitered. It was about 200 acres and half a mile on each side. In the very center sat the sicarios’ trailers and two humongous water tanks storing the well water. To the west was the barn/warehouse. A car hauler semi-truck was parked out front, partially loaded with luxury vehicles. A 9,000-gallon fuel tanker truck sat nearby and was being used to fuel diesel pickup trucks.
Two houses were on the compound. One, an older prefabricated house, sat just north of the northern road and the other was a much larger farmhouse. The house sat back from Rice Road a few dozen yards and was surrounded by tall trees and a few outbuildings. One of the new diesel Land Rovers, meticulously detailed clean, sat out front. Two armed men strolled around the area aimlessly. There was no sign of any toys or play equipment outside.
“Gonna need a lot of bodies to hit this,” Mr
. Sibley said to one of the other soldiers.
“Four teams, at least, with fire support.”
“Hopefully we can get the Army to join us. What do you think a 30mm round from a Stryker will do to those trailers?”
“Blow through them like Taco Bell through my gut.”
It would be nice to have the Army on their side.
The Battle of Todd Road
Coded messages were sent by radio to Major Huerta and Sheriff Villareal to assemble at Hidalgo’s bunker for the planning mission the following afternoon. Villareal came over the hill on horseback with Captain Tejada, as he was head of the SWAT team. Huerta arrived at the bunker in a Hummvee that sported new bullet holes. “Just so you know, I got ambushed coming off the bridge over the river. Good thing they didn’t have anything heavier than AKs.”
“How many were there? Any idea who they were?” Tejada asked.
“At least three shooters, but we didn’t stop to ask. One of you better show me a good backroad back to Santa Paula.”
“Sheriff, what if we send some guys over there to flush them out?” Tejada asked.
“Captain,” Huerta said. “What if instead we just ice them with the Strykers for you on our way to the objective?”
Villareal shook his head. “And let the whole county know a battle is about to break out? It’ll have to wait. Your Strykers are all terrain vehicles. Cross the river behind the jail and go around.”
“I can let three Strykers go from the college. I can release three more to the jail just in case there is another attack. Three should be plenty of firepower with the grenade launchers and 30mm cannon.”
“So what are you thinking, roll up and shoot ‘em up while our guys pour out the back of the vehicles?” Hidalgo asked. He was envisioning a classic armored infantry assault.
“We can’t roll up in an armored convoy, Alex, Villareal said. “Two nuns in a Hyundai would make them suspicious. A frickin’ tank will remove all doubt.” Faces dropped across the room as everyone understood the point. “We want a confused reaction. If there is no alarm from the sentries because they are dead, even if they wake up when the vans arrive, they won’t immediately assume it’s an assault.”