Sunday, June 22
Bob Bullard knew that nothing impressed the ladies like a visit to his yacht. The Eldorado was docked downtown on San Diego Bay, just a few blocks from the Federal Building and his high-rise penthouse condominium. The Department of Homeland Security's Southwest Regional Director had offices in a half dozen states, and his main office was in Los Angeles, but he spent as much time as possible in San Diego.
Who wouldn't? Los Angeles had become unlivable. It was practically a war zone, almost as bad as Tijuana or Juarez. That was no shock, because LA was virtually a part of Mexico today. Most Angelinos were dual citizens, and no Mexican election season was complete without campaign stops in LA by every serious Mexican candidate. You could drive for miles in any direction in Los Angeles (if you had a death wish) and not see a single word of English on a sign or billboard.
On the other hand, Bob Bullard knew that the federal government had drawn a bright red protective line around San Diego, because of the national security importance of the world's second largest concentration of naval power. The better parts of the city and county would not be allowed to collapse into a state of anarchy and gangsterism, like so much of the rest of urban California.
This was especially true of the narrow coastal strip west of Interstate 5, where most key government personnel and other influential persons lived and worked. Coastal San Diego County remained an oasis, a refuge from the Mad Max reality of California. Coastal San Diego was a hot ticket, the place where people wanted to live--if they could afford it. And an eighty-foot yacht tied up right on San Diego Bay? When it came to impressing the ladies, that combination could not be beat.
Wendy Larmouche and her girlfriend (Sandra somebody-or-other) were TSA airport screeners, babes who stared at x-ray machines and wanded passengers' crotches for a living. Bullard had met them at San Diego International on a public relations visit to the terminal, while showing the media the TSA's latest imaging technology. He had lucky timing in meeting the newly hired women. As a customary habitué of the Gulfstream, Citation and Learjet end of air operations, he rarely ventured over to the public side of any airport. He considered public terminals to be prime places to catch diseases like Cameroon Fever or the Bird Flu, and he avoided them like the plague.
Wendy had caught his eye immediately, and so on his instructions, his PR flacks selected her to serve as a model TSA representative for the media demonstrations. She was from Nashville, just past thirty and single. Best of all, she was natural blond with an impressive rack, which looked oh-so-inviting, straining the buttons apart on her tight white TSA uniform blouse. Everybody had a great laugh when she went through the new skin-revealing body imaging equipment. Bullard knew that he had found a live one when she laughed along with them, and gleefully sashayed through it several times to their obvious enjoyment.
He had 25 years on her, but that didn't matter much. Not when he was the Regional Director of the Department of Homeland Security. Besides, he kept in great shape lifting weights, and he still had most of his hair, even if it was kept black with men's hair dye. Lately, he was even winning the Battle of the Receding Hairline, now that his implants were taking hold and showing steady progress. (It was a mystery to him how a man so covered with thick black body hair could go bald precisely where he needed hair the most, but this problem was steadily being conquered through expensive applications of modern medical technology.)
The airport visit had taken place a month earlier. Through his underlings, Bullard let Wendy Larmouche know that he was personally responsible for her rapid promotion to assistant supervisor. After that, Wendy had needed little coaxing when she was invited out for a Sunday morning boat ride on San Diego Bay with the Regional Director.
If the chauffeured Lincoln Navigator bristling with antennas and radios had impressed the girls when it picked them up at their apartment, the sight of his eighty-foot yacht sent them almost into a swoon. The driver was waved through the security gates onto the government docks at the foot of Broadway, and he drove right out onto the hundred yard long concrete pier and parked by the Eldorado. Bullard met them there, casually leaning against the hood of his black BMW 745, wearing a sky-blue polo shirt, khaki slacks, and Docksiders boat shoes.
He had checked himself carefully in the mirror before leaving his penthouse condominium: his hair was combed straight back and he was closely shaved. Someone had once told him that he looked like "Robert De Niro in his prime," and he clung to this facade. Bullard was slightly self-conscious about his height (or lack thereof) of only five feet nine inches. His self-image as "De Niro in his prime" helped him to overcome that shortcoming, and he did what he could to affect the look and mannerisms of the great actor. Maybe he had a bit more nose than De Niro, but when seen directly from the front, he knew that he was almost a dead ringer.
A mile across the bay beyond his yacht laid the gigantic gray slab of the nuclear aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, presenting a suitably awesome backdrop for the girls' visit. They stepped down from the Navigator, and looked over at the eighty foot converted power yacht with wide eyes. Wendy twanged, "This is your boat, Bob?" in her Tennessee drawl.
"Yeah, sort of, you might say. I mean, since I'm the regional director, yeah, I guess it is."
Wendy's red-painted mouth hung agape as she made for the aluminum ramp, which led from the cement quay down to the floating dock where the yacht was tied up. Brunette Sandra was right behind her, grinning. Today, instead of their usual white TSA uniform blouses and black slacks, both girls were wearing colorful Polynesian-style wraparound sarong skirts, skimpy halter-tops and sandals. Wendy had insisted on bringing a girlfriend--as if that would guarantee her pretended chastity. Bullard had to smile at her naivete. Broads always thought that bringing along a gal-pal would mean safety in numbers, but as a strategy, it rarely worked. Not after the girlfriend met Cesar, his boat captain! Bullard followed them down the metal ramp.
His captain was dressed in a white short-sleeved uniform shirt with black shoulder boards and white pants, affecting the look of a naval officer. He was a trim man, a young forty, with black hair and a thin black mustache. He stepped down from the yacht's stern boarding gate to greet them, and graciously helped them up the steps from the floating dock. "Good morning ladies! I am Captain Escoria, but please, just call me Cesar--we are all friends aboard the Eldorado." He extended his hand to help the women aboard, making direct and prolonged eye contact with each of them in turn.
Bullard boarded last, enjoying the shapely rear view of the two women as they climbed up onto the yacht. He noted that Cesar was already laying his Latin-lover shtick on Sandra. Antonio Banderas himself had nothing on Cesar Escoria, not when it came to romancing the Midwest farmer's daughters! He had perfected his wingman role; he had it down to a science. As usual, Cesar knew in advance that his boss was after the large-chested blond hottie. He would be more than satisfied with bedding her mousy brunette friend, if that was how the day played out.
Wendy couldn't stop smiling. "I still just cain't believe this is your boat! Bob, you are just so, so..."
"Well...I'll admit it's one of the nicer fringe benefits of the job."
"It sure is a pretty thang--that is sure enough true!" Wendy scampered through the open side bulwark and into the cockpit, gawking in all directions at the varnished teak rails, and the polished stainless steel fittings. Her brunette friend Sandra returned a lingering look at Captain Escoria, as he helped her aboard by her hand.
The sleek yacht had been seized by Customs three years ago while attempting to smuggle five thousand pounds of cocaine into San Diego Bay, concealed in auxiliary fuel tanks. The vessel had subsequently spent two years sealed shut and moldering away at a south bay boatyard, which was used by Customs to impound drug boats. After being appointed the regional DHS director, Bob Bullard had spotted the Eldorado during a routine facilities tour. Today, she was in better-than-new condition, after spending almost a year undergoing a bow to stern conversion to official government duty. On paper, Eldorado was now a DHS "Mobile Emergency Management Platform," an entirely new species of floating government asset that Bullard's sharp young assistants had invented at his "suggestion."
By no means was Eldorado the queen of the San Diego waterfront. At "only" eighty feet, the power yacht was less than one-half the length and a quarter of the tonnage of the serious megayachts, belonging to the international ultra-wealthy jet setters who frequently visited San Diego. On any given day, a helicopter tour of San Diego Bay might reveal fifty yachts larger than this one.
On the other hand, the Eldorado had excellent range for her size, and her twin Caterpillar diesels could take her across more than a thousand miles of open ocean on the three thousand gallons of fuel in her tanks. This was a critical factor, because when the time inevitably came to bug out, this would be sufficient range to carry him non-stop from San Diego to any point between Cabo San Lucas and Acapulco.
And this was why Bullard had selected a moderately sized vessel. While there was no way to hide the hundred-foot-plus megayachts, the eighty-foot Eldorado would easily blend in among the larger Bertram, Hatteras and Ocean sportfishers. Blending in was going to be essential, when the time came to disappear south of the border. Toward that end, her beautiful (but distinctive) original gleaming red hull had been repainted in plain vanilla, matching the deck and superstructure. An all-white powerboat with classic sportfisher lines was the ultimate in yacht harbor camouflage--and he would need all of the camouflage he could get, after he split from California.
Despite his high position, Bob Bullard had no illusions about the long-term viability of the federal government, or its ability to stave off the steadily deepening economic crisis. As a member of the Senior Executive Service within the DHS, he was now an insider, a member of the American nomenklatura, and he had access to the most highly classified reports. Even though it was never stated in plain English, for those who could interpret the bureaucrat-ese, it was obvious that total financial collapse was only a matter of months away, or a year at the outside. The conversion to blue dollars, the mandatory "gold repurchase" laws, the limits on bank withdrawals, the restrictions on currency exports and all of the other gimmicks were only Band-Aids, applied over terminal economic cancer.
They were just temporary confidence-boosting measures, stopgaps designed to keep Joe Six-pack calm and buy a little more time.
Meanwhile, elite insiders with sufficient foresight were making their own private arrangements to ride out the gathering storm. All of the intelligent top-level players he was meeting recently were preparing their own parachutes, ratlines and escape tunnels. In fact, this was the number one subject of their private off-the-record conversations. For many, these preparations meant buying homes in exclusive walled and gated communities with plenty of private security, far from the urban megapolises. For others, there were retreats on remote islands, complete with their own generators and fuel supplies.
Some optimists believed that because the port and the naval bases were so important, the federal government would never let San Diego go down the toilet. Many of them had moved into high-rise condos near the key government buildings downtown. Bob Bullard currently lived atop just such a luxury condominium, but he thought of it as a temporary sanctuary at best. It was a standard perk of his office, it was convenient, and it cost him nothing, so why not? He could drive between the Federal Building, his condominium and the yacht in less than five minutes, or walk it in ten. All three were located in a high security zone that was regularly swept clear of homeless bums, junkies and petty street criminals. With a heavy police presence, the downtown office district was safe enough--for now--but a suffocating air of dread permeated the California landscape.
Bullard knew the truth: there was simply no federal operating budget left, and there were no more currency-propping tricks left in the bag. The federal government was out of gas, and running on sheer momentum. The wheels had begun to come off the wagon two years ago after the oil crisis, when the hedge funds and derivatives markets had imploded, a hundred trillion dollar supernova sucked into a black hole. Like most Americans, Bullard had only a hazy grasp of the meaning of the derivatives disaster, but the effect was crystal clear: trillions of dollars had somehow disappeared in less than one week, leading to the failures of several of the largest banks in America. Their doors had only been kept open through a massive intervention from the Federal Reserve's so-called "New Bank," pumping in brand new make-believe money created from thin air.
That had only been the beginning of the ongoing slide into national economic ruin. After a year of widespread corporate bankruptcies, factory closings, layoffs and massive pension defaults, bitterly angry (and often hungry) Americans had taken to the streets by the millions. Local and federal government buildings in every state capital and major city were surrounded by seas of demonstrators banging empty pots and pans, demanding that the government "fix the problem, and fix it now!" Leading politicians and senior bureaucrats were forced to sleep in their offices, or in some cases commute via rooftop helicopters. They were unwilling or literally afraid to run the pan-banging gantlets that had taken over the streets and sidewalks around their offices.
After two weeks of massive around the clock protests, the federal government had been panicked into action by the unending din of clanging pots and pans. For the policy makers, all that remained were the printing presses, both the paper and electronic money producing kinds. Their secret economic "cure" was printing endless truckloads of Federal Reserve Notes to stem the danger of bank runs and head off a deflationary spiral.
Since the Federal Reserve had ceased publishing their "M-3" money figures back in 2006, the exact amount of this new currency creation could be concealed from the American people. The runaway inflation it caused could not. As an insider with well-positioned friends at Treasury, Bullard knew that once the President and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve decided to inflate their way out of default, the money supply had been doubling every three months!
Hundreds of thousands of laid-off workers, as well as retirees suddenly without pension checks, continued to bang their empty pots together as they marched around the U.S. Capitol and White House. The penniless unemployed and the abandoned pensioners banged their pans and demanded their dollars...and lo and behold, they got them! Predictably, hyperinflation of the U.S. dollar had been ignited.
Foreign countries (beginning with China) holding US dollar-denominated assets began a mad rush to unload them for tangible goods, even as their value plummeted. The entire world was soon awash with unwanted and increasingly worthless dollars. The economic dominos continued to tumble, one after another. The Treasury Bond market collapsed next, and the United States was unable to borrow new money, even with interest rates soaring past 20%. There was simply no faith left in the enduring value of the dollar. The trust had been shattered; "full faith and credit" became a bitter joke.
The most recent ploy of converting the old greenbacks to "New Dollars" at ten to one to stem the runaway inflation had only bought a few more months reprieve at best. The switch to the new "blue bucks" was clearly not a one-time-only permanent solution, although that was the official government spin. The national leadership understood that the economy was gasping and choking on life support, even while they preached sermons of hope, courage and patience to the masses. The synthetic "plasma extender" of new thin-air money could not substitute for a solid currency. None of them knew the week or the month that the remaining economy of the USA would grind to a halt, but most of them felt in their bones that the final days of reckoning were fast approaching.
When that final reckoning occurred, Bob Bullard did not plan to be standing at attention on the deck of the American Titanic, singing the national anthem while the ship of state slipped beneath the waves. The regional DHS director was nothing if not a survivor, and he had his own eighty-foot lifeboat fueled up, stocked up and ready to go. He fully intended to run away, to live to fight another day...and not for the first time, either.
His thoughts returned to the notorious attack on his former boss's home, which had launched him onto his current ascending trajectory. Five years ago, Wally Malvone had been the leader of the covert "Special Training Unit" of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. They had both been at the STU leader's house on the Potomac River, just south of Washington, when it had been attacked by domestic terrorists. After Malvone's capture by the terrorist snatch team, Bullard had shot and killed his old superior. He had regrettably been forced to seal Malvone's lips forever, before he could be taken away and made to divulge the dark secrets of the Special Training Unit. Secrets that might have pinned numerous murder raps on Bob Bullard.
After shooting Malvone, Bullard had run away, and yet, incredibly, in the aftermath of the attack, he had been called a terrorist-battling hero, and he was promoted! This dramatic reversal of fortunes only confirmed to Bullard that it was his fate to rise inexorably upward, even as his colleagues sank all around him.
He had first felt this strange destiny within him on that ill-fated day in Waco Texas, when most of his ATF assault squad had been wiped out. Yet even that disaster had improbably led to him winning ATF valor awards, and a key early promotion. These two experiences had convinced him that even while America broke apart and sank, he would be able to skip across the burning wreckage, and somehow achieve an even higher station. This was his karma. He accepted it and he welcomed it.
His full-time boat captain Cesar Escoria knew the deal, and was an integral part of Bullard's escape plan. He had brought Cesar over to the DHS from the ATF's Special Training Unit, after that radical endeavor had gone up in flames at Malvone's house on the Potomac. Escoria's fluent Spanish and abundant Latin charm would be critical for enabling Bullard to make the transition to a comfortable life in Mañanaland. Bullard had the high-level police, military and governmental contacts that would make the transfer possible, but his Spanish was less than fully adequate to the task. With Cesar as his Capitan del Yate, melding the Eldorado into the luxury marina landscape of the Mexican Riviera was going to be no problema.
Just as it was going to be no problema coaxing Wendy down below into the Eldorado's luxurious master stateroom, after today's boat ride. When you had money, power and a yacht, broads were never a problem. It already promised to be a great day on the water. The sun was burning through the light morning overcast, and Bob wondered how long it would take Wendy to peel off her wraparound skirt and her halter-top to catch the rays. He gave her ten minutes, max.
Wendy's friend Sandra had scampered around the pilothouse up onto the forward deck, shedding her own halter top and wrap, revealing a skimpy red bikini. Cesar was giving her a personal tour of the yacht. All the way back in the cockpit, Bob could hear Sandra giggling and squealing at Cesar's familiar jokes.
Wendy asked, "Bob? Can I call you Bob?"
"Of course you can, doll face." Bullard had heard De Niro call broads "doll face" in a movie. If De Niro could pull it off, so could Bob Bullard. And why not? He was the regional director of the DHS! He could call broads whatever the hell he wanted to--and Wendy was just a hillbilly airhead anyway.
"Are we going to take this big ole' boat out for a ride today?"
"No, not today. It's a major hassle to get it underway. Instead, we're going to go out on one of my Homeland Security speedboats. It's a real screamer; it'll be a hoot. You'll just love it, I promise. They're going to swing by and pick us up right here in a little while."
"You mean like a race boat? One of those long skinny thangs, with the great big motors?"
"That's right, one of those. Just like NASCAR on the water, only better. It's a real Fountain racing boat--it was confiscated from the dope smugglers." Just like the Eldorado was, he thought, but didn't say.
"Oh Bob, you really are something, you are just full of tricks, aren't you?" Wendy unwrapped the gold sarong from around her waist and let if fall to the deck, revealing long tan legs, and a tattoo of a spread pair of wings above her round buttocks.
"I try to be, Wendy. I try to be." Bullard sat on the blue canvas upholstered bench seat with ran across the transom, leaned back and crossed his legs, and appraised her very promising curves. She was wearing only a thong bikini bottom under her wrap, another hopeful sign. When they returned to the Eldorado from their seventy mile-an-hour jaunt out past Point Loma on the Fountain, Bullard knew that the two ladies would be as excited as bitches in heat. They always were--it never failed. There was just something magical about the wind on their faces, the pounding waves, and the roar of the motors.
"Say Bob, what's a girl got to do to get a drink around here anyway?"
He smiled. "Name your poison, sugarplum. Just name your poison."
***
Ranya awoke from a catnap lying on her back. She had been resting on the wild grass, her brown pack for a pillow. She was wearing dark blue jeans and her black hooded sweater, her booted ankles crossed, her fingers intertwined across her stomach. The two men who were going to be the other passengers on the plane were occasionally talking, while sitting on opposite sides of a picnic table twenty feet away from her.
In the camps, she had become accustomed to making the transition to consciousness in a sly way, in secret. In D-Camp, they had slept in open barracks on bunk beds. Useful information could sometimes be overheard, if one was skilled at pretending sleep. She knew that a giveaway was sudden perfect stillness and quiet on the part of the faker, so she gradually began a light snoring sound, her mouth partly open. After five years internment in the camps, the natural sleeping sounds women made were all very familiar to Ranya Bardiwell.
She had been dropped off at this place by Mark Fowler, in his truck. The two men were already waiting there, clad in desert camouflage uniforms, sorting through their gear on the wooden picnic table. Fowler asked her to wait in the truck while he went over and talked with them, and he returned in a few minutes. "Don't bother trying to make friends with those guys. They've got their game faces on, you might say. They're in the tactical mode now. They'll accommodate you, and that's about it. It's Caylen Barlow's plane and pilot, so they don't have any choice about taking you, but don't expect them to like your showing up. Just listen to the pilot. He's already been briefed, and he knows exactly where to drop you off. You're clear about the link-up in Mountainview?"
"Sure, no problem."
"You've got the New Mexico road map? You'll be forty miles southeast of Albuquerque, when you jump out."
"I've got the map in my pack, and a compass. We're landing on a dry salt lake. After I get out, I walk four miles south, across the salt flats, until I hit State Road 60. Railroad tracks run parallel to 60; I follow the tracks five miles west toward Mountainview. Right at 6 AM, I walk into the Ancient Pueblos Restaurant on State Road 60, and order breakfast. I ask the waitress for Don, and then I tell Don that C.B. sent me. He'll keep me in the back room until the bread truck makes its delivery, and that's my ride into Albuquerque. It's a good plan."
"Yeah, it is," replied Fowler. "Now, most of the folks in Mountainview are still on our side, but watch out. Milicias could set up checkpoints or do sweeps while you're there. When they show up, it's always at least fifteen or twenty of them, sometimes a lot more, and they're usually kind of twitchy on the triggers. Especially around gringo cowboys, like in Mountainview."
"I'll be careful."
"Don't put your pistol together until you're in the city. It won't do you any good at a checkpoint anyway; it'll just give you away."
"I won't."
"You've got my knife?"
"Right here." She patted her right side front jeans pocket. "Thanks."
"Well, okay then, good luck. I hope you find your son, I really do. Getting his address, that was a lucky break. If you make it back here, you know you've got a place to stay. Both of you."
"Thanks for everything you've done?"
"No problem, I'm glad to help. Say, how's your shoulder?"
"Sore, but I'm damn glad to be rid of the chip." An adhesive butterfly closed the tiny incision.
"You've got everything you need?"
"Yes, thanks. I'm ready." Barlow and Fowler had seen to her outfitting with the gear and clothes she would need. After much discussion, she had decided to keep Linssen's 9mm Glock pistol. It was broken down into its main parts, and concealed against the metal internal frame of her pack. They were concerned about magnetometers being used in Albuquerque in portals, and metal detecting wands being used at checkpoints. The Glock had plastic ammo magazines and a plastic grip and frame assembly, and hence fewer steel parts to conceal. These parts and the ammunition were hidden inside the modified seams of the pack's heavy-duty nylon fabric, against the metal alloy internal pack frame.
The downside was that the pistol had to be carried in such a way that it would not be readily available in the case of an unexpected emergency. She was simply smuggling it into the city, to have it ready to use at the time of the hoped-for rescue of her son. Fowler did provide her with a wickedly sharp Strider folding knife for self-defense, in situations where the Glock would be disassembled, hidden and unavailable.
While resting on the grass she reviewed her conversations with Barlow and Fowler. She visualized her forthcoming rendezvous and pickup at the restaurant. She imagined various possible rescue scenarios in Albuquerque. Even through closed eyelids, she could tell that the sun was almost gone. Their plane was going to arrive at last light. She continued to feign light snoring, her mouth agape in an unladylike pose, while she listened carefully. Finally, she was rewarded with unguarded conversation by her two reticent companions.
***
"She's sure a sweet piece of ass, ain't she? Pretty face, nice long legs... Looks real inviting, laying there on her back?"
"Too hard for my taste. I can't abide women that tough. Women should be softer. And she looks like a butch with that short black hair."
"You're just pissed off because she won your HK off of you yesterday."
"Naw, it ain't that."
"The hell it ain't. You're pissed off because you had to buy your own pistol back from her. You should be grateful she let you have it back for only fifteen hundred blue bucks."
"Yeah, she don't have a clue what guns are worth."
"Lucky you didn't bet your rifle, or she would've took that too."
"Like hell she would! Okay, I'll give her she's a crack shot with a pistol, and not half bad running around with a little bitty carbine. But take us out to the thousand-yard range, and I'd eat her lunch! Nobody can touch me at a thousand yards with my .338."
"Shit you say! I can beat you left handed at a thousand! Hell, I made a sixteen hundred yard kill with this here fifty caliber last December. Confirmed it with the laser range finder, in front of two witnesses."
"Where, across the Rio Grande, down by El Paso? Man, that ain't sniping, that's just plain murder."
"So? It's a free-fire zone out on those river islands, ain't it?"
"Yeah, I suppose it is, but it's still nothing to brag on. Nobody's shooting back, to speak of. Nobody serious. Did I ever tell you about when I was in Iraq, when?"
"Only about two dozen times."
"Yeah, well, that was sniping. The real deal. Once I spent three straight days in a sniper's hide, right in Ali Baba's back yard. Peeing in a bottle, not moving an inch. You earned your kills over there--they were shooting back."
"Well, we're going to earn them tomorrow morning, that's for sure. A whole bus load of armed Milicias and only two of us?"
"Don't worry; it'll be a turkey shoot. We used to do it the same way in western Iraq, taking out Syrian infiltrators in SUV convoys. We'd put a round from a suppressed fifty cal through the lead vehicle's engine block, and they wouldn't even know they were being shot at. They'd think they busted a rod or something. Once they'd stop, they'd all climb out to look at the engine, take a leak, stretch their legs..."
"And that's when the fun begins!"
"Yep, you've got that right. I've flown recon over our ambush position. It's in a draw, on a long upgrade. Once the bus comes to a stop, there's nowhere for them to go, no cover or concealment at all. You'll be 400 yards in front with the fifty caliber, so if anybody feels like staying inside the bus, just put rounds straight through it. Then they'll get out! I'll be on the flank, and I'll have the angle to pick off anybody who tries to find cover under the bus, or behind it. We'll both take out the runners, and they'll all be dead in five minutes, max. Then we'll call for the bird. You wait--it'll be even better than Iraq."
"How many, you figure?"
"Intel report says they change the guard at 0800 hours, and usually it's about twenty of them Milicias in a ratty old school bus. Brown berets, M-16s, the whole nine yards. So they'll be getting to the ambush site just after seven. We'll do the job and be in the air before they know what hit them."
"You think they'll have any shooters, anybody who can put out counter fire?"
"Naw, these Brown Berets are all show and no go. They're good for scaring old ladies at checkpoints, that's about it."
"What if the plane doesn't show up for the extraction? We'll be a hundred miles from nowhere if the shit hits the fan."
"It'll be there. Anyway, we won't initiate the ambush unless we're in radio contact with the plane. He'll be sitting on the ground just a few minutes away, like we briefed it. And just in case, we've got a solid escape and evasion plan. Hey, you didn't mark it on your map, did you?"
"What, you really think we could be captured? Man, I do not plan on being captured by those Milicias--that is not in my plan."
"I didn't say it was. It's just not professional to mark your map, just in case. The guy's taking a big risk, being our E and E contact. So marking his ranch or anything else on your map...well, it's just not right. It's not professional."
"Look, just because I didn't fight in Iraq, doesn't mean I'm not a professional."
"No offense, but Albuquerque SWAT isn't exactly the Army Special Forces."
"Now, don't start on--"
"And anyway, why couldn't you pass that Spanish test? You're born and raised in New Mexico, and you couldn't pass the Spanish test? Hell, I learned some Arabic, and I hated those freakin' rag heads. All those pretty little senoritas you got over in New Mexico and you couldn't learn Spanish in 28 years?"
"Look, you dumbass Tennessee redneck, I do speak Spanish! I mean, I speak it okay for a gringo cop, right? But that test was a son of a bitch. No way could a gringo pass it. It was rigged so only beaners could pass it, I swear to God."
"Listen...quiet."
***
Both men were instantly silent. Ranya heard it at the same time, the faint buzzing sound of a distant airplane engine. She opened her eyes, stretched, and stood up, then slung on her pack, her back to the two men in desert camouflage.
It was now last light, and the unlit plane wasn't visible until it was very near. It was flying only a hundred feet above the ground, a high-wing single engine prop plane. The dirt strip was just a designated scrap of flat pasture, identical to any other 500-yard long parcel of dirt and grass. Only the picnic table, some fifty gallon drums of aviation fuel, and a faded windsock on top of a metal pole identified these 500 yards as an airstrip.
The plane turned into the wind, tipping a wing, leveled out and landed gently, rolling past them and coming to a halt only a few hundred feet away. The little aircraft was a tail dragger and it maneuvered awkwardly on the ground, swinging around and taxiing back toward them. It seemed to be painted in shades of tan and beige, but this was difficult to determine in the fading light. It finally came to a stop with its high right wing tip almost over the table. The big three-bladed prop wound to a halt and the field was suddenly quiet again. It was clear to Ranya that whoever was flying was intimately familiar with this crude landing strip.
The pilot opened the cockpit door beneath the left wing and hopped down, while the two other men opened another pair of doors on the right side of the fuselage. These two doors swung to both the front and to the rear, revealing a second bench seat behind the pilot and copilot's seats, and behind that an open cargo area. The two-man sniper team ignored Ranya, and loaded their tan packs and rifle bags into the empty space behind the rear seats.
One of the snipers then took a black hose and clambered up on the angled wing strut, and put the nozzle into the fuel inlet on top of the wing above the cockpit. The pilot walked to the drum by the picnic table and began manually pumping gas, topping off his tanks. They worked without words; it was evident that they were well practiced at loading and fueling the airplane in near darkness. As instructed, she approached him, and he greeted her. He was a lanky forty-something, about her height, with crew cut hair. He was wearing fatigue-style pants and a dark t-shirt. Military, or ex-military, she thought.
"Howdy. You're my mystery passenger?"
"That's me."
"Pleased to meet you, mystery passenger." He continued rotating the pump handle while speaking to her. He might have been smiling, but the light was fading fast and it was hard to tell.
"You're getting out first, so you'll sit in back, on the right side. You just have the one pack? Stow it on the floor, between you. We'll be in the air for an hour and a half on this leg, and when we land, we won't be hanging around. Once we stop, I'll holler go, and out you go. Open the middle door, chuck out your bag, hop out quick and get clear 'cause I'm going straight out. That's it, that's all there is to it. Almost a touch-andgo, and then we'll be gone. Just hike south till you hit the tracks. The half moon's going to rise at 2300 hours--that's eleven PM. It'll be easy going for you."
"I really appreciate this, and I'm sorry if I'm putting you at any extra risk."
"Nah, forget it. It'll look just like a false insertion. We do a couple of false insertions on every run, to make it harder for them. Just in case they're tracking us. So far, we haven't had any problems--I generally fly too low for radar--but it's SOP. Doing false insertions, I mean. Anyway, that part of New Mexico is just one big landing strip for a Maule 7. The dry salt lakes are even easier. It ain't no big thing."
"Well, I appreciate the ride."
"Hey, it's my job. But you're welcome."
The sniper who was leaning over the wing whistled, and the pilot finished pumping the aviation fuel. He retrieved the hose nozzle and the sniper stepped down from the strut. The pilot walked around the plane giving it a final visual check, and then stood well off by himself and lit a cigarette. When he was through with his smoke, he ground out the glowing butt with his boot, and climbed back up into the left seat.
The older sniper from Tennessee, who Ranya recognized from the shooting range, sat in the right front seat next to the pilot. They conferred quietly over a folded air map, using a pencil light. She had been proud to overhear during her recent "nap" that she had won the Heckler and Koch pistol off of a Special Forces combat veteran--a Green Beret. She had been happy to sell it back to him after the matches were over: she needed the cash, and couldn't take any extra firearms into New Mexico. At the time, she had thought fifteen hundred dollars was a great price. Oh well. "Blue bucks"--it took some getting used to. Five years was a long time to be away.
The other sniper--the former Albuquerque SWAT cop--climbed into the back seat from the right side and slid across without a word to her, and pointedly looked out the left side window. So he was one of the cops who had been fired for failing the Spanish test. She already knew from the big-rig truck driver that this was a new form of governmental ethnic cleansing--Nuevo Mexico style.
Ranya climbed up and in after the SWAT sniper, placed her pack vertically on the floor in the middle, found her three-point seat belt mostly by feel, and buckled herself in. Finally she latched the door beside her closed. It was a tight fit in the narrow cabin, and she was uncomfortably close to the sniper beside her. They were almost touching at the hips, with their knees bent around her pack.
It was now fully dark, and the pilot fitted a pair of night vision goggles over his face, adjusted the straps, did final checks and switched on the engine. The moment he let off the brakes, the propeller began to pull the plane forward with a powerful surge. Ranya couldn't see any of the gauges or dials in the front of the cockpit; she supposed that the pilot had no problem seeing them with his night goggles. He taxied to the center of the field, adroitly swerved into the wind, and gave the Maule full throttle. The acceleration pressed Ranya back into her seat and the plane immediately hurtled forward with a roar, bumping down the unseen pasture like a runaway dune buggy. In what seemed like only seconds, they lifted smoothly off the ground, and began to climb into the night sky.
Unnoticed by the three men, she couldn't stop smiling.
***
Bob Bullard awoke in the darkness and checked the glowing face of his watch. It was still Sunday, almost midnight. He was lying on his back, on the king-sized bed in the master stateroom. Eldorado was gently rolling alongside the dock, probably from the wake of a tugboat churning out of the bay. One of Wendy's long sleek legs was crossed over his. He made no effort to keep from awakening her, while he pulled off their covering sheet and extricated himself.
It was time for Wendy to go. She'd been a great lay, and a hell of a lot of laughs, but when you let chicks sleep over all night, they began to get ideas. Next thing you know, they're in the galley making breakfast, and after that, they're setting aside closet space. No thanks. Been there, done that, paid the alimony. He switched on the brass desk lamp, and pulled on his khaki trousers.
"Wha...what time is it...?" she asked, arching and stretching.
"It's almost Monday, that's what time. Look, something's come up--duty calls," he lied. "I've got to go. Cesar will drop you off. Come on doll face, get dressed."
"But ba...by, I'm slee...py..." she yawned.
"Yeah, me too, but I gotta get up, and so do you. You can sleep when you get home. Cesar will take you. Come on, get up." As a rule, he never let broads spend the entire night in any of his beds. And above all, he never let them stay in this bed, especially while he was off of the boat.
Not with what he had concealed beneath it. No way in hell.
***
Ranya lay on her stomach among the weeds, on the gravelly slope where the two-lane State Road 60 bridge rejoined the earth. Behind her was a hundred yards of dry wash, the final pinched remnant of the barren salt flat. Almost an hour earlier the insertion plane had landed and braked to a rapid stop four miles north. The pilot yelled go, she threw her pack well clear of the open door, and jumped down. The plane immediately accelerated away with a roar and a rush of prop blast, pelting her with salty grit. She had been prepared for this, so her hood was up and she had faced away as the unlit Maule 7 took off. When she turned around and looked, the single engine plane had already disappeared from view. She found the North Star to get her initial bearings and began her walk to the south, crunching across the saltpan.
All around her was nothing but salt, faintly glowing bone white in the starlight. At 11:07 PM the half moon edged above the low eastern horizon, above Caylen Barlow's ranch, above D-Camp, above her old life in Virginia. The emergence of the half moon brought a weird sort of dawn. The cool horizontal light left crazy shadows across the flats, pointing to where dead trees and tough plants had tried to survive at the margins of the harsh alkaline environment. The walking was easier in the moonlight, with less chance of stumbling into a gully or hole. In the distance, she could see the occasional flickering headlights of a vehicle driving across State Road 60.
In the sky ahead of her, she noticed an extra bright star, which was both blinking and moving from right to left across the firmament. After a while, she decided it was a passenger jet, perhaps heading from Los Angeles to Dallas. She wondered what other aircraft might be above her, which she could not see.
She remembered a story told by another female prisoner in D-Camp, a woman who had been arrested in the wilderness in Oregon. She had been doing some shooting practice with her husband and a few close friends. Nobody outside of this circle knew about their clandestine weapons training. Just the same, they had been ambushed in thick forest, on the remote Jeep trail leading back to the state road. On a tight switchback, a platoon of screaming camouflage-clad federal ninjas leaped out from cover and surrounded their SUV at submachine gun point. They were forced out and down to the ground, and zip-tied with their wrists behind their backs. The federals' boots had literally been on their necks, as their faces were ground into the dirt.
After being frog-marched and dragged to a nearby clearing, before being loaded onto a Blackhawk helicopter, these unlucky Oregonians had seen a UAV drone making low "victory passes" over them. The federal agents looked up and waved skyward for the remotely operated video camera. Later in D-Camp, Ranya and the woman from Oregon surmised that the UAV had been on a routine patrol, and had possibly homed in on the acoustic signature of their firing, the location of which did not correspond to an "authorized" public shooting range. The distant operator of the UAV could have then zoomed in with powerful video cameras, and seen their semi-auto "assault rifles," which had been banned since the Stadium Massacre. Next, it would have been a simple matter to vector in the platoon of ATF agents, who were themselves carrying everything from MP-5 submachine guns to 50 caliber sniper rifles.
So tonight, Ranya wondered what airborne platforms might be slowly circling above, studying the anomalous heat signature moving southward across the saltpan, after a small airplane had briefly paused on an unauthorized flight?
Well, the feds couldn't be everywhere, she reasoned. They couldn't watch every inch of America, every minute of every day. As long as Caylen Barlow's private air force maintained security, there would be no reason for any governmental agency to be focused in on this saltpan, on this particular night...she hoped. If they were, well, she could easily be surrounded by helicopter-borne troops, or she could simply be blown to smithereens by a missile released from above.
Such things were beyond her ability to affect, so she trudged on.
She passed the carcasses and skeletons of numerous cattle and sheep that had wandered onto the unforgiving salt. She had a sudden fright when an immense black-winged bird dived at her unsuspected from behind. She felt and heard the whoosh from its wings as it glided down and brushed past her, touching her hood, and then skimmed low above the ground until it was out of her sight.
By 11:15, the vast saltpan was narrowing to within clearly visible borders on either side, and by 11:30 it had squeezed into a dry creek bed. She could see ahead where a wide bridge carried the state road safely above the infrequent flash flood torrents. According to her New Mexico highway map, the railroad tracks ran parallel to State Road 60, on the other side. Her plan was to walk under the two-lane road bridge on the dry wash, and climb up the bank at the steel trestle railroad bridge a hundred yards beyond. She would hike the remaining five miles to Mountainview on the tracks.
Cars were crossing the bridge only every fifteen or twenty minutes. She turned away and froze when they passed, a black stump to anyone who might chance to look north across the moonlit salt flats. The closer she walked to the highway the more vigilant she became. The moonlight didn't penetrate to the floor of the dry wash under the bridge. She wondered if any dangerous wildlife lurked troll-like beneath the overpass. The yard-thick concrete pillars that supported the roadway could have hidden a platoon of zombie ghouls, she imagined in her rising fearfulness.
She pulled the big folding knife from her sweatshirt's front pouch, thumbed open the blade, and held it at the ready as she entered the shadows. The Strider knife was worth more than many pistols, and she silently thanked Mark Fowler for the extravagant personal gift. It was no pistol--the Glock was useless, in pieces hidden inside her pack--but it was the next best thing. She began to edge her way into the moon-shadow under the bridge between a pair of concrete supports, the space jammed with a helter-skelter tumble of flood-driven rocks and timbers. She was finding a pathway, watching intently for wild animals or other lurking monsters, when she heard a sudden male voice, loud and clear across the still night air.
"Is that you? Finally! You know, we've only been waiting here for three frikkin' hours!"
Ranya spun around and dropped to a crouch behind a boulder, as a vise of fear clamped around her chest and throat. Who was above, waiting for her? This was not in the plan!
Then a shrill female voice demanded, "God Derek, what took you so long? You've been gone forever! My cell phone doesn't work out here, and we were really, really scared! You got the gas?"
"Yes, I got the gas, any other stupid questions?"
"Was the gas station open in Mountainview? Do they have any food?" asked the female.
"No Destiny, the gas station was not open! First, I had to find a hose, and then I had to steal this gas. I had to! Then a dog heard me and almost woke up the whole fucking town. I thought any minute some redneck was going run out and blast me full of buckshot, while I was stealing the gas right out of his pickup truck. So don't even tell me about how scary it was, waiting in the van for good old Derek to go get the fucking gas!"
Twenty feet below the unseen quarrelers, Ranya's heart gradually dropped back below a hundred beats a minute, and the garrote of sudden terror slowly eased its pressure around her neck. She continued listening, putting the pieces together, and crept in the moon shadow beneath the side of the bridge to the slope at its end, and up the sandy bank to the highway.
"B-b-but Derek, if the gas station is closed, how will we be able to get to Albuquerque tonight?" asked the young female.
"We won't, obviously."
Ranya could hear the sounds of a vehicle's gas cap being unscrewed and removed.
"But I'm hungry, and I want to sleep in a real bed..."
"And your rich Daddy isn't here to make it all better, is he? What kind of a comrade volunteer are you? They want fighters for the revolution, not crybabies!"
"We're not crybabies Derek," said another female voice, lower. "We just need to take showers and wash our hair. That's not too much to ask, not after four straight days in the van! We thought for sure we'd be in the dorms by now."
The other male voice said, "We would have been, if we hadn't gotten off the interstate back at Santa Rosa. That's why we ran out of gas."
"Don't you start that shit again, Kalil! You've got NO room to talk! If you hadn't of talked us into going all the way to Kansas City just to score some weed, we would've been in Albuquerque yesterday. And then you got ripped off and lost almost all of our money, and for what? Two friggin' quarter ounces of shitty ditch weed! So don't you even talk to me about--"
"But if we had stayed on the I-40, we--"
"Kalil, you don't know shit about cars! The front end is shot on this piece of crap! Above 50, it's shaking so bad it's going to--"
"Then let me drive it, if you can't handle it! A little shaking isn't the end of the world. It can take it--"
"You don't know shit! If we--"
"Look guys, it doesn't matter!" said the first female, the one who had been called Destiny. "Stop fighting, okay? The blame game, it's so over, like, it's so yesterday! Let's look at tomorrow, okay? We can handle another night in the van, what's one more night, right Lisa? We'll get more gas in the morning, and we'll be at the university by lunchtime. Like, it's okay! Really!"
"If they even have gas in Mountainview," said Kalil. "And if they'll sell it."
"Let's just get the hell out of here," said Derek.
Ranya snaked up the slope between prickly weeds and cactus until she could peer under the steel guardrail at the western end of the bridge. A dark full-sized van was parked on the dirt shoulder, partly obscured by tall spiked shrubs along the side of the road. How had she missed seeing it? She must have been too fixated on getting under the bridge--not a good sign. Literally tunnel vision, she reflected.
A man was tilting a gas jug above the fuel inlet on the left side of the van. Another man stood on the other side, looking out to the north, across the dry salt lake. A smaller person, a female, stepped out of the van and hugged this man from behind, and then pulled him back inside. The one with the fuel can finished, closed the gas cap, and tossed the empty jug into the back. Then he went around to the driver's side, climbed in, and began turning over the engine.
After a few tries the engine caught, the lights went on, and the dark van drove off with a backfire, amidst a cloud of smoke. Ranya watched its tail lights disappear down State Road 60 toward the west, toward Mountainview. 'Comrade volunteers,' heading toward a 'revolution.' Were they for real? She guessed their accents to be from the upper Midwest. Well, whatever they were, wherever they were from, they were apparently heading for the University of New Mexico, in Albuquerque.
Score one for Caylen Barlow. Evidently, he knew what he was talking about.
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