Monday, June 23
Ranya slept in the backseat of an abandoned Cadillac, on the outskirts of the crossroads village of Mountainview. Even in June the high plains were chilly at night at 6,000 feet of elevation. Mountainview was in fact entirely flat, but it did enjoy a spectacular view of the Monzano and Sandia mountains erupting to above 10,000 feet just behind it. On the other side of these mountains, forty miles northwest as a crow might fly, lay her destination: Albuquerque.
She washed her face with a baby wipe from her pack, and applied light makeup in the Caddy's rear view mirror. Ranya hated the length of her hair: too short to tie back in a ponytail, but too thick to stay put behind her ears. She wasn't used to loose hair rubbing her face this way, it irritated her. But at least the chopped and dyed-black hair had gotten her out of D-Camp, so she really couldn't complain. She brushed it back, and pulled on her newest ball cap: tan, with a leaping blue marlin on the front. It was one of her untraceable Barlow ranch acquisitions, along with her cheap Timex digital watch, her folding knife, and other items. She wore the same clothes she had hiked and slept in: blue jeans and the dead assistant warden's black hooded sweatshirt.
At six AM she was standing outside the front door of the Ancient Pueblos Restaurant on State Road 60, when it was unlocked from the inside by a plump middle-aged woman. The gray-haired lady smiled and said, "Good morning, honey, c'mon in," and flipped the "Closed" sign inside the glass door over to read "Open." Evidently, the Espanol Solamente laws had yet to take root in Mountainview.
Ranya followed her inside and picked a table near the kitchen. The restaurant was humble, but homey, with just eight tables in the main dining room. The place was neat and clean, the tables were covered with fresh white tablecloths, and mouth-watering aromas were emanating from the kitchen.
The waitress returned to her table with a steaming pot of coffee, and Ranya turned over a porcelain cup already on the table to be filled. "I'll be right back with the cream, all right?" she said. "Will you be having breakfast? We only take cash, hon." She gestured to a hand-painted sign above the kitchen, which read, "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash."
Ranya understood that the woman had noted her brown backpack, her lack of a car outside, and the dust on her slept-in clothes. "Cash is fine. Can I see a menu?" Ranya guessed that the regulars at this small town diner probably knew the selections by heart.
"Sure thing--just a sec."
While the server was gone, the front door opened again with the jingle of a bell. Four young people, college age, entered the dining room. Two guys and two girls. Ranya pretended to examine the mural of an ancient Indian mesa dwelling painted on the wall behind them, while observing them in her peripheral vision.
It was 'the comrades' from the bridge. Ranya glanced over at them. They were wearing jeans and khaki shorts, and sweaters and sweatshirts. One very tall guy, at least six foot four, had dirty blond shoulder length hair and wore wire-rimmed eyeglasses. The other was a young black of medium height and build, with a bushy Afro hairstyle. Both had several days' growth of whiskers on their oily faces. One girl was a blond with a long ponytail, attractive except for the rings through her eyebrow and lip. The other was a dumpy brunette with her hair in tight braids, and too many silver earrings to count. Derek, Kalil, Destiny and Lisa...up close, and in the light of day. Derek had large blue oriental character tattoos visible on the back of his neck above his gray University of Michigan sweatshirt, and silver rivets punched through his ear lobes big enough to serve as pencil holders. Ranya turned away, disgusted.
The waitress returned with Ranya's menu and cream, and four more menus for the other table. Derek asked the woman, "What time does the gas station open up around here? We need to get back on the road." The town's independent service station and mini-mart were visible through the front windows across State Road 60.
"Don't worry, by the time you finish breakfast, they'll be open. You're having breakfast, right?"
"Um, sure. Yeah, we're having breakfast," said the tall one.
"We only take cash. Cash or metal. No checks, no credit cards, no e-bucks."
Ranya watched their obvious discomfort out of the corner of her eye.
"Uhh...yeah, no problem. Let's see the menus."
Ranya studied her own plastic laminated folding menu. The prices were marked in black grease pencil over the old printed figures. Pancakes, bacon and two eggs were $64! Suddenly her bankroll of nearly $9,000, mostly in crisp new hundred dollar "blue bucks," didn't make her feel quite as rich as it had yesterday.
The waitress came back to take her order. The glass-plated front door opened again, and a genuine cowboy, about fifty, held it open for his wife. He was wearing a black cowboy hat, cowboy boots, jeans and a jean jacket. Ranya could see at a glance that he was the real thing, not a poser. The man nodded to the waitress, and they both raised eyebrows at the table of unsavory young people.
"Have you decided yet, hon?" she asked Ranya, her pencil poised over her blank pad.
"I'll have the Western omelet, with the home fries, and a side of bacon. And a glass of orange juice."
"Okay, coming up."
"And, ahh..." She lowered her voice. "Is...Don here?"
The waitress looked directly at Ranya, skeptically, sizing her up. "Don? You want to see Don? You know him? You related, or something?"
"Ah, no, not exactly, but somebody told me..." Ranya was flustered and floundering slightly, afraid of being overheard. The meticulously planned linkup was suddenly not going according to the plan.
The waitress just stared blankly at her. "Don's not in yet. He'll be in later, most likely. You want to leave a message?"
"Ahh, no. Wait...actually, well...maybe. After breakfast. If he's not here by then."
"Sure thing." The waitress turned for the kitchen.
Damn, thought Ranya. Now what? Hang around and wait for Don? Leave a note for him, and kill time in this remote village, where a stranger without a car will stick out like an Eskimo in the Sahara? While pondering her options, she overheard the college-aged group talking quietly among themselves.
"I've got four hundred left, but it's got to go for the gas," said the longhaired Derek. His hair was parted in the middle, and hung in dirty strands under his whiskery dimpled chin. "We can eat when we get to the university; they'll have something there."
The pony-tailed blond grumbled, "I can't get my cell phone to work in this crappy little town! Daddy...um, my f-father...well, he could zap me a thousand e-bucks, if I could only get this stupid phone to work!"
"Des, didn't you hear her?" whined the chubby brunette Lisa. "They don't even take e-bucks here! Cash only, she said."
"Shit!" exclaimed Destiny, getting a look from the cowboy's wife two tables over. "How much is toast and coffee?"
Ranya looked across at them again, sizing up the situation. She got up and sidled over to their table, drawing their hushed attention, and leaned among them and said softly, "Hey, you guys go to Michigan? I go to Virginia--UVA." She addressed herself primarily to their apparent leader, Derek with the neck tattoos and the rivet-punched ears, smiling while suppressing her revulsion.
The longhaired young man had a greasy face and terrible body odor--or perhaps his entire group did. He replied, "Yeah, I do...I mean, we do...or at least we did."
"You wouldn't be heading to Albuquerque by any chance, would you? If you are, I could chip in for gas, if that would help. I could even pay for a full tank, if you can give me a lift up there."
The four of them broke into smiles, sudden relief flooding their faces at the prospect of both a hearty country breakfast, and an easy non-stop drive to the University of New Mexico, their neo-Marxist Mecca.
***
It had taken Special Agent Garabanda only five minutes to walk up 5th Street from the Federal Building to the Bernalillo County Courthouse. This was where the latest skirmish in the ongoing custody battle with his former wife Karin was going to be fought. They were the first case on the docket this Monday at nine AM, and the judge was only fifteen minutes late when she appeared from her chambers.
The chubby family court judge had a long brown ponytail, and a pierced nose. Alex Garabanda knew he was in deep trouble going before Judge Galatea Balfour-Obregon. Prior to becoming a judge, she had been a New Mexico left-wing radical activist and public defender for decades. It was not his first time going before her, and so far, it had never turned out well.
His ex-wife Karin was seated at the other table on the far side of her female attorney, and would not even make eye contact with him. Instead, she had stared straight ahead while they all waited for the judge to appear. He had to admit Karin looked terrific, with her long blond hair teased out. She was wearing her beige pants suit, with the ruffled blouse showing at her throat and cuffs.
Alex's former wife had already dropped his name. Now Karin Garabanda-Bergen was once again simply Karin Bergen. She had divorced him, dropped his name, and was now attempting to take Brian away. The fact that the female judge also had a hyphenated last name filled him with additional foreboding.
His attorney whispered, "No matter what, don't let the judge bait you into losing your temper. That's what she wants, an incident--I know how this bitch works. Remember, if it doesn't go our way today, we'll straighten it out on appeal. Just keep your cool." Rudy Contreras was a local Albuquerque lawyer with a good reputation for successfully defending fathers' custodial rights, even if he came across as somewhat sleazy, with his thin mustache and slicked-back hair.
Judge Balfour-Obregon began, while slowly shaking her head in obvious disdain. The proceedings were being conducted entirely in Spanish, in accordance with recently passed state laws. Her Spanish was adequate, but choppy and ungrammatical, with a residual New York accent. "Special Agent Garabanda, I've reviewed the case file. I'm particularly concerned with that absolute disaster two weeks ago at the Federal Law Enforcement Officers annual Memorial Day picnic. I must say, I find it hard to believe that the federal government entrusts a firearm to an FBI agent who can get drunk and assault a woman, in front of over a hundred witnesses."
"Your Honor, my client was not under the influence of alcohol, and he did not 'assault a woman.' What happened at that picnic was deeply regrettable, but an initial board of inquiry has determined that it was Ms. Bosch who initiated--"
"That's enough, counselor. Don't even go there! Special Agent Bosch, let us not forget, had to be hospitalized after your client put her in a choke hold."
"My client was only restraining Ms. Bosch, so that she could not strike him again with an aluminum softball bat--"
"Silence! I've heard enough. More than enough! The irrational homophobic attitude of your client is very well known to this court. He's lucky he wasn't charged with hate crimes after that picnic incident! If Special Agent Garabanda can't deal with the fact that his ex-wife is dating a woman, that does not speak well to his stability nor to his socialization, not to mention his fitness to share in the raising of their son."
"But--"
"Therefore, it is the decision of this court that your client shall lose all custodial rights and privileges. Mr. Garabanda, your joint custody agreement is hereby terminated. And furthermore, I'm granting Plaintiff's motion to make the temporary restraining order against you permanent. Special Agent Garabanda, if you so much as come within two hundred yards of Karin Bergen, Brian Garabanda, or Gretchen Bosch, I'll have you arrested and thrown in jail for contempt!"
Garabanda's lawyer tried again, "Your honor, I--"
"Save it, counselor. It's time that homophobes like your client were dragged into the 21st century! The fact that he is an FBI supervisor doesn't mitigate the facts of this case. In fact, I should have expected a far more socially progressive attitude from someone of his ethnic background."
"Your honor, the fact that my client is--"
"I told you I was finished, counselor! We'll re-examine limited visitation rights in six months. Until then, I would strongly advise your client to stay well clear of his former wife, her fiancee Ms. Bosch, or their son Brian."
Special Agent Alex Garabanda slowly lowered his forehead to the table. Behind him, he heard Gretchen Bosch snickering in her unmistakable female baritone voice.
***
The back of the old Dodge van had a thick yellow foam mattress pad covering the cargo deck. That was the extent of the custom furnishings and creature comforts. Derek and Kalil sat up front in the separate "captain's chairs," arguing about road directions, arguing about the exact form of the perfect socialist utopia, and arguing about their best speed to avoid shaking the van to pieces. Because of their limited top speed, there was no benefit to taking State Road 60 all the way west to I-25, which ran north along the Rio Grande, on the other side of the mountains. Instead, they decided to take the narrow two lane State Road 355 north from Mountainview, along the eastern slopes of the Manzano and Sandia mountains. This was shorter in total mileage, and their wobbly front end meant holding their speed below 60 miles per hour anyway.
The green van was a clapped-out windowless commercial model, with exposed steel frames on the insides. Destiny and Lisa wedged themselves into sitting positions in the back, leaning against luggage bags and heaps of mixed-up clothing. Ranya was not surprised to see that the male "comrades" took the two comfortable front seats. She guessed that Derek, the driver, owned the van. He looked to be the oldest, probably a graduate student, and he was clearly the "alpha male" of the motley pack.
The interior of the van stank of unwashed clothes and stale food, but it was a ride, and it was heading to Albuquerque. The twenty gallons of gas Derek had put into the tank at the service station in Mountainview had cost Ranya eight of her crisp blue $100 bills. This was a flat nonnegotiable $40 a gallon, well above the posted cost, and even then it required extensive pleading to get the fuel at all. This was a serious chunk of her working capital, but she knew that if she couldn't make it to Albuquerque, the money meant nothing anyway.
The girls were quiet, zoning out with tiny music buds planted in their ears. The guys were talking almost nonstop, providing a running political debate and travelogue from the front seats, almost shouting over the music blasting from their stereo. Ranya didn't recognize the rock group or the songs. It appeared that Derek leaned toward classical Soviet or Cuban-style Marxism, leavened with a dash of Trotsky. Kalil seemed to be a garden-variety America-hating anarchist; primarily out to take part in what he believed was his best opportunity to "strike back at the white corporate power structure."
Ranya sat on an overturned plastic milk crate just behind them, between their two seats. From that makeshift seat, she could see out of the front windows, and enjoy the odor-dampening fresh air. She had peeled off her sweatshirt as the morning warmed up, and was wearing a plain black t-shirt above her long blue jeans. They occasionally plied her with questions as they drove up the cracked asphalt.
"That's right, I came from Virginia."
"You hitched all the way from Virginia to New Mexico?" asked Derek. "That's like, so totally awesome! I'll bet you had some sick adventures along the way, eh?"
"Yeah, you'd win that bet."
"So, did you see any of that Cameroon Fever back east? The Monkey Pox? Man, that was some bad shit down there in Florida and Georgia last year, eh?"
Ranya put this question together with what Olivia and her husband had mentioned in their RV, and groped for enough of a response to satisfy them. "Not in Virginia. I didn't see it in Virginia."
"Those Monkey Pox scars really freak me out," said Derek, shuddering. "I think I'd rather die from the fever than live with those scars."
Ranya was tempted to ask him why, then, he had punched giant rivet holes in his earlobes, and had tattoos on his neck...but she resisted the momentary impulse.
Kalil said, "I know how bad the crackers are back there in Virginia...you'd never catch me in those redneck states. They'd probably lynch my black ass just to keep in practice. You see any of those KKK dudes back there?"
"No, I guess I got lucky. Didn't see any Klan this time," Ranya answered.
"How about the Klan down in North Carolina, burning out the immigrants?" asked Kalil. Ranya thought that he resembled Jimi Hendrix, from the posters she remembered seeing in college. Bushy Afro hairstyles must have made a fashion comeback while she was imprisoned.
"I don't think that's just the Klan," said Derek. "I saw it on TV. There were lots of African-Americans right in there with the rednecks in those riots."
Kalil responded angrily, "Man, that is bullshit! Well, some Uncle Toms maybe, but that's all. Real brothers wouldn't be hangin' out with no crackers, attacking no people of color."
"Hey man, I saw what I saw...it was on television! Blacks and whites were together, going into those immigrant shanty-towns with clubs and Molotov cocktails." Derek turned around to their new passenger, one hand on the wheel. "What do you think? You're from back there. How bad are those anti-immigrant riots in the Carolinas? It's ethnic cleansing, right?"
Ranya had to stall and evade, hiding her lack of current knowledge. "It's not so bad in Virginia...but I've been on the road for a few weeks. I haven't been following the news much. What's the latest?"
Derek answered his own question without a pause. "Some kind of new Minuteman militia is trying to terrorize the Hispanics into leaving the South. They call themselves the 'American Patriot Party' and other bullshit fascist names like that. American Nazi Party is more like it! They've been firebombing housing developments built by immigrants, you know, the ones who used to be undocumented workers. Before the federal amnesty, I mean. The fascists still call them 'illegal aliens' and say they're not real citizens. Hispanic day workers can't wait outside of home supply stores anymore, or rednecks in pickup trucks will jump them with baseball bats. Or sometimes they get in a truck, they think it's for a job, and that's it--they're never seen again. Gone! The rednecks say all the jobs are going to immigrants--that's what they say."
"Same old racist KKK, if you ask me," said Kalil, disgustedly. "Now it's the Minuteman Klan! I mean, how can a worker be illegal? Man, the whole idea of borders and nations: that is so 20th Century! It don't matter where a worker is from, does it?"
"It might matter if he took your job, don't you think?" ventured Ranya. "I mean, that's what all those rednecks and Uncle Toms probably think."
Kalil appeared confused, forming thoughts and mouthing words that he could not articulate. Clearly, his internationalist orientation was at some level in fundamental conflict with the idea of American blacks losing jobs to newly arriving "undocumented" Hispanic immigrants, whether or not they were granted some kind of guest-worker amnesty along the way. In a nation seemingly in an economic depression, Ranya guessed that losing a job could mean losing a home, or not putting food on the table.
While Kalil shook his head and muttered curses, Derek continued with his lecture. "And this ethnic cleansing, it's not just in the South. The fascists have been terrorizing Hispanic immigrants in New England, Michigan...hell, almost everywhere. I mean, in Idaho, the police have been rounding up immigrants and bussing them right out of the state, 'for their own protection,' they say! The immigrants all got the federal amnesty, but some states say the amnesty is bogus and the immigrants are still illegal. It's bullshit any way you slice it, the way Hispanic immigrants are being treated!"
Kalil added, "And lots of them are heading right here to New Mexico: this is where the oppressed peoples of color are finally making a stand. This is where the revolution is happening, I mean really happening!"
Derek switched the subject to Ranya, and her intentions. "So, umm, you're going to UNM to join the revolution too, right?" He kept pushing his loose hair behind his ears, and it kept sliding forward across his oily and unshaven face. "That's where we're going. Time to put up, or shut up, right?"
"Right, put up or shut up." Ranya fervently hoped they would shut up. She didn't want to sit this close to them, but she felt compelled to look out the front windows, and she needed the fresh air from the open side windows to subdue the pervasive stench of body odor in the back. It stank worse than a D-Camp field latrine.
Derek continued, "Michigan sucks so bad anyway. Other than school, there's nothing left for us back there. Nothing but reactionary fascists up there anymore! Real Nazis. Well, except for Detroit and Lansing of course. But what's the point of just preparing ourselves to join the intellectual class? I mean, how's that going to help the people? Sitting around Starbucks, bitching and moaning about the fascist plutocracy, while we swill their corporate coffee? What good does that do? Right here is where the front line in the revolution is today! Viva la revolucion, right?"
"Oh yeah, viva la revolucion," she replied. "Say, Derek, speaking of la revolucion, how's your Spanish? You know, with the Espanol Solamente laws?"
"Oh, that...that's no problem. That was just so they could fire all the reactionary white racist pigs. That won't matter for us, because we're coming to help--we're joining the cause. We're on their side."
"So...you don't actually speak Spanish?" Ranya asked.
"Uhh...yo quiero Taco Bell?" Derek twisted around and winked at her, and laughed at his own joke. The holes punched in his ears disgusted her more each time he turned in profile. "I'm a quick study. I'll learn it fast, I mean, how hard can it be?"
Ranya asked, "Do any of you guys actually speak Spanish?" She repeated her question twice, and the blond girl pulled out an earpiece to hear her question.
"I've got Spanish One loaded on my music pod," offered Destiny. "I've been listening to it when I can, sometimes. Yo habla Espanol mucho bueno. See, I'm picking it up."
Derek said, "It won't matter. They have volunteers coming from all over, like an international brigade. Kind of like the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s. You know, last semester we took the most incredible course on the history of the international proletarian struggle. That's where we all met. That's how we found out the real truth about New...I mean...Nuevo Mexico's new revolution."
"Yeah," added Destiny. "Professor Ruskin, he was just so awesome. He really opened up my eyes, I want to tell you. He was just...the best ever. Hey, show her his letter, Derek! Show her Rusky's letter to Professor Johnson."
"Oh yeah," he replied, opening the lid on top of the center console between the front seats. He pulled out a folded sheet of personalized stationery. "Check this out--with this letter, we're like, totally golden! We'll be so totally in, man." He held it up for Ranya to see, and then put it back into the console. "Professor Ruskin at Michigan is in tight with Professor Johnson at the University of New Mexico...there I go again! Nuevo Mexico. Hah! I gotta watch that! Anyway, he's vouching for us, in this letter. When we find Professor Johnson, and give him this letter, we'll be all set. Land reform, that's Professor Johnson's gig. We'll probably be able to help him, you know, like researching the old Spanish land grants and deeds and titles, stuff like that. I mean, the Mexicans were so totally ripped off after 1748. Or maybe it was 1848? Well, anyway, it's like, all their land around here, you know?"
Destiny was nodding enthusiastically, gazing up at Derek. "Professor Ruskin was really the one who gave us the idea for all this. Joining the revolution, I mean. At least for the summer. Who knows, maybe for even longer. Maybe we'll be able to transfer into UNM, you know? But it's definitely going to be good for a master's thesis, at least."
Kalil opened the glove box, found a brass cigarette case and extracted a pre-rolled joint. He fired it up with a butane lighter, took a prolonged drag and passed it over to Derek. After holding his breath for an inordinate time, Kalil exhaled most of the smoke through the open passenger side window, and choked out, "Yeah man, the revolution, that's the real thing! No more talk--talk is bullshit!"
State Road 355 headed in long straight lines toward the mountains, and then began to curve and twist as it followed the contours where the high plains met the foothills. The junipers and grasslands gradually turned to pines, as the van rolled down into valleys, and struggled back up again. Small and not-so-small ranches were visible on both sides of the two-lane asphalt road. Some houses were close to the road, some were set far down paved driveways. Some of the ranches had Western-style arched gates created from iron or timber, often decorated with their particular cattle brands. There were some rather shabby trailers and private junkyards, but also many comfortably affluent homesteads and a few of what might almost have been called mansions.
"Look at that, another burned-down house!" announced Derek, slowing the van to gaze to the left at a heap of ashes punctuated by a pair of standing chimneys. "That's the third one in just a couple of miles, what's up with that?"
Destiny was now kneeling behind Derek's seat, to look out the front windows and take a hit off the joint. Her clingy green Sierra Club t-shirt was riding up and Ranya couldn't help but notice the hideous platter-sized sunburst tattoo across the small of her back. Destiny said, "Oh, I heard all about that on NPR. The rich white ranchers who have to leave, you know, to give back the stolen land...well, sometimes they're burning down their own places. Just so that nobody else will be able to live in them! Can you believe that shit? It's so typical of the greedy white man. You know, 'if I can't have it, then nobody can'."
"Yeah," said Kalil, "That's whitey for you all right." Then he turned to her, beaming a glassy-eyed smile. "But hey, you all, you're not like that, at least most times! I mean, for white folks, you is all right. Now pass that joint back up here, Destiny girl."
"You remember what Susan Sontag said about the white race?" asked Derek.
Destiny answered him, nodding. "Sure. That's Diversity Studies 101, everybody knows that quote. 'The white race is the cancer of human history'..."
"...And treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity," he finished for her.
"Right on!" exclaimed Destiny. "I just wish Professor Ruskin could see us now."
"Oh, hey, look at that sign!" said Kalil, exhaling another cloud of dope smoke out the right side window. "Check it out: ¡TIERRA O MUERTE!" What's that mean?" He was pointing to a crude homemade red and white billboard, painted on a dilapidated barn along the right side of road. The former ranch house, which was a few hundred yards away across a pasture, was a pile of ashes, with only some charred timbers and a stone chimney still standing.
"Land or death," replied Ranya. "It means land or death."
"Oh, wow!" said Derek, "We must be getting close to the liberated zone. No more rednecks! No more racists! Viva la raza!"
"Looks like the party is over for whitey in Nu-e-vo Mex-i-co!" added Kalil. "Oh yeah, this is gonna be so sweet! Payback time!"
"Derek, stop the van!" said Destiny. "Let's get out and take some pictures. I can send some back to Michigan on my cell phone. We can show everybody that we've actually made it to the revolution! We've made it! I can't believe it, we've actually made it! This is going to be the best summer ever."
There was no other traffic in sight on the long straight run of ranch land. Derek slowly reversed back down the road and pulled off on the dirt shoulder. The four giddy comrades piled out of the van, with Ranya following the girls out of the sliding side door. Destiny handed Ranya her cell phone and her Nikon digital camera, both already opened up and ready for use. The four "Voluntarios" stood in front of the barn, the white and red ¡TIERRA O MUERTE! sign behind them against the backdrop of the Manzano Mountains. They were smiling ecstatically, standing side by side with their right fists raised high in the air, as Ranya filmed them for posterity.
***
Bob Bullard spent Monday morning in his corner office in the San Diego Federal Building, prior to taking his helicopter up to Los Angeles. The maroon-colored five-story building spread like a malignancy between the feet of soaring glass and steel office towers in downtown San Diego. Most people hated the grim prison-like appearance of the Federal Building, but Bullard loved it. Its forbidding appearance instilled a healthy dose of fear into those unfortunates commanded to enter it on official business.
In front of the main entrance foyer, in the middle of an enclosed quadrangle, was quite possibly the most hideous piece of public sculpture ever commissioned, anywhere or anytime. This was an angular black steel pinnacle, leaning over precariously, and tapering to a needle sharp point at the end of its fifty-foot length. Bullard liked to imagine screaming tax delinquents being thrown down and impaled on its brutally cruel tip, to slowly perish like insects stabbed by an entomologist's pin. (Of course, he kept these private thoughts strictly to himself.)
Today his staff had scheduled a half hour of "community outreach." This could often be turned into a profitable exercise in public relations, with photo opportunities showing the deeply concerned regional homeland security boss lending his ear to a stream of noteworthy whiners and malcontents. Artfully staged, these photo ops could perform the miracle of turning Bob Bullard into a kindhearted uncle, with a twinkle in his eye and a ready pat on the head for the kiddies.
This morning it was the turn of the local Muslim Sheiks, Imams and Muftis to moan and complain. Bullard's secretary buzzed them into his fifth-floor corner office at nine AM. He was amused to see the three of them wearing traditional Middle Eastern garb, including colorful dish towels draped over their heads, held in place with what looked like coiled fan belts. Together the three ran part of the Montclaire section of San Diego (known locally as Little Baghdad) as their personal fiefdom. Montclaire was situated atop a mesa surrounded by cliffs and canyons, a natural redoubt. The enclave, just on the eastern side of I-5, was home to the largest mosque and "Islamic cultural center" in California. Even years before the walls had gone up, Montclaire had proven to be a comfortable haven for a number of the 9-11 hijackers.
Several major San Diego surface streets ran through Montclaire, but except for these public roads, access into the enclave itself was strictly controlled. Licensed armed guards with full beards, wearing green military uniforms and checked Arafat-style kefiyah scarves, were stationed at the few unbarricaded streets leading into the "Muslim Quarter." These menacing guards were the only visible face that Montclaire showed to the outside world. Bullard often wondered why some of the thousands of Marines who called San Diego home didn't shoot them on sight while driving past, simply out of habit. This thought gave him a minor smile, and propelled him up out of his black leather executive chair as they entered his office.
"Good morning gentlemen, good morning. What can the Department of Homeland Security do for you today?" After a prolonged exchange of double-pumping handshakes, flowery greetings and one attempted cheek kissing (Bullard would have bitten off a nose or ear first) the Imams got down to business.
"Director Bullard, we have complained and complained to the mayor about the continuing anti-Muslim harassment, yet our complaints fall on deaf ears. So in desperation, we are coming to you for help."
"All right--fair enough. That's what I'm here for. So what's the problem?" Bullard returned to his executive chair, sat behind his desk and cracked his knuckles.
"The law clearly states that we may play the call to prayer of the Muezzin five times a day from our minarets. Yet we continue to have loud 'rock' music blasted into Montclaire when we do so! Even worse, our Muezzin's loudspeakers are fired upon on a daily basis. This is intolerable! You must see that the local police take their responsibilities seriously!" The other Imam's nodded their heads vigorously.
"I'm sorry about that, I really am. I'll do what I can. However, in all frankness, as long as you play that 'Allah Akbar' tape with the volume turned way up, folks might choose to send their own message back at you. It's still a free country, you know."
The transformation of Montclaire into "the Muslim Quarter" had been startlingly rapid, once the amplified loudspeaker broadcasting of the "call to prayer" had been approved by the city council. Non-Muslims began a mass-exodus from within audible range of the muezzin's cry, and property values plummeted. Newly arriving Muslim immigrants moved in to snap up the vacant homes at fire-sale prices. Other Muslims living scattered across Southern California moved to the enclave to avoid "religious persecution," and the process continued until the Montclaire mesa was virtually 100% Islamic. In ten years, the Muslim population of San Diego County had tripled to an estimated 300,000--most of whom lived in and around Montclaire.
"But what about the shootings?" asked the leader of the Imams. "Our minarets look like Swiss cheese!"
"Maybe if you turned down the volume on the call to prayer, maybe that would help? Or what if you turned the loudspeakers around, facing inside? So you could hear the prayer in Montclaire, but not all over San Diego?"
"Mr. Bullard, sir! We have our rights, under the First Amendment..."
"Yes, you do..."
"It is a hate crime to blast idolatrous, satanic music into Montclaire during the call to prayer! We insist that the perpetrators be pursued and charged. It is disgraceful, it is anti-Islamic bigotry, it is--"
"I'm sure it is. Now, while we're discussing Montclaire, I'd like to pass along a concern coming up from the mayor's office. He says they've been seeing a steady stream of folks showing up in San Diego emergency rooms without right hands. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" Bullard held up his own knobby right hand and wiggled his fingers.
"I don't see how this is any concern of yours! You know very well that we have an agreement with the city to observe Sharia Law within Montclaire. I'd like to point out that within our walls we have the lowest crime rate of any urban area in California."
"Sure, and you also have the highest rate of one-handed vagrants all around you."
"Director Bullard, we didn't come here today to suffer another assault on our faith! We came here to reach some understanding, not to suffer another Islamophobic attack."
"Oh Jesus...keep your turban on. Personally, I don't care how you take care of business inside of your own walls. But outside is another matter. Like when the local girls start getting gang-raped."
"That is a lie! A slander against all Muslims! I refuse to listen. And those harlots should not dress that way near Montclaire! What are decent Muslim boys to do, when they see those teenage girls half-dressed like charmutas, like whores?"
"Then stop complaining about your minarets getting shot up. It goes both ways. That's all I'm saying."
"Director Bullard, this is outrageous! You sound as if you are condoning these unprovoked attacks on Montclaire! You know what is happening in Detroit, and I'm certain that you would not want to see a similar situation here in San Diego."
Bullard rose to his full height and leaned forward across his desk, staring hard at the sheik. "Now listen here, Ali Baba, you're not in Detroit, and I'm not a liberal pussy like the Mayor and Governor back there. You throw up barricades and block traffic on the through-streets like they did in Detroit, and I'll bulldoze right through them. And while we're at it, we'll bulldoze all of your unapproved dead ends and cul-de-sacs, every last one of them. I'll run bulldozers through your walls, and leave Montclaire wide open! I'll have all of your security guards' gun permits revoked, and let the gangs back in! Trust me: you don't want that! You have a cozy little situation going on in Montclaire--but you're not fooling anybody. We haven't come down hard on you, but believe me, we can. So turn down the volume on your Allah Akbar, and stop chopping off hands, all right? And tell your boys to leave the infidel girls alone outside of your walls!"
Bullard paused, looking at each of them in turn, and quieted his tone before continuing. "That is, if you three want to keep on playing Grand Pooh-bahs with your own little harems... Oh yeah, I know all about your harems, and how young some of those girls are. Girls and boys, I should say. Now if you'll excuse me gentlemen, I've got other appointments."
That should hold them for a while, he thought as they spun in their robes and departed his office, sputtering and muttering and fuming in impotent rage.
After they were gone, Bullard's young chief of staff entered the office and sat on the black leather couch across from his mahogany desk. "That went well, boss. I think they know you mean business."
"Damn right I do," said the Homeland Security honcho. "We won't be having any of that Detroit bullshit in the Southwest Region. I'll burn Montclaire to the ground and bulldoze the ashes into the Pacific first."
"Sounds like they realize it now, if they didn't before."
"You know what they say about Arabs," said Bullard. "They're either at your throat, or at your feet."
"Yeah. Say, listen boss, you know that special list of yours, the, umm...folks who are presently incarcerated?"
"Sure, the scumbags I helped put away. What about it?"
"Well, you wanted me to inform you when any of them were released."
"Okay, so who was released?"
"Actually, nobody was released, exactly."
"Then what are you telling me this for?"
"One of them escaped."
"Escaped? Who? From where?"
"Umm...it would be a certain Ranya Bardiwell. A female prisoner."
"Bardiwell...Bardiwell...I remember that name. Go ahead, refresh my memory. Who is she, and why do I care about her?"
"She's from Virginia. She was involved in the Malvone affair."
Bullard leaned back in his leather chair, his fingers laced behind his thinning hair. "Oh yeah...Ranya Bardiwell. Now I remember. Hot little number. Brunette. We tried to pin the Virginia Attorney General's assassination on her boyfriend, but they both disappeared. When we finally grabbed her, she got put away under Article 14."
"Right. Conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism. There was no solid evidence, so she just got three years of non-judicial preventive detention. When that stretch of NJPD was up, it was rolled over for another three."
"So, where'd she escape from?"
"Officially, she bolted from the Federal Prison Transit Center in Oklahoma City. You know, 'Air Con.' But actually, she escaped from an NJPD camp in western Oklahoma. All women, mostly Article 14s. And she killed an assistant warden on her way out."
"Hmm. Okay. All right. Shouldn't be a problem, but you never know. Keep an eye out for her, tickle your search engines, and check the traffic going into the Field Offices. If she surfaces, if you hear anything at all, let me know right away."
"Okay boss, will do. Now, your next appointment is with the California Director of the Border Patrol. He wants to know why you're ordering his men back off the line in the Campo sector again."
"Christ, whatever happened to just emailing? All right, send him in."
***
"Whoa...there's another one of those red X's," said Kalil. The giant X was painted on State Road 355 directly in front of an antler-decorated gateway arch, at the beginning of a long private driveway. The terrain was more forested and hilly now, and the ranch house, if any, was invisible from the road. "What do you think it means?"
"Probably means the land was stolen from the Mexicans," answered Derek. "Probably marks a 'land reform' area. Spanish land grant territory."
"That's some serious shit, then," said Kalil. "'X marks the spot' must be some kind of a warning."
"What did you think 'Tierra o Muerte' meant?" asked Ranya.
Derek said, "Man, that Governor Deleon, he's not messing around! Hey look, there's another sign! At least this one's in English."
This sign was also written in red paint, on a white sheet of plywood, attached to a pair of timber posts just off the shoulder of the road next to a barbed wire fence. Derek stopped in front of it and they all read it together, the girls crouched behind the front seats. While they paused, a black crew-cab pickup truck blasted past them from behind, crossing over to the oncoming lane, going at least one hundred miles an hour and quickly disappearing from sight.
The sloppily hand-lettered sign read: "Warning Gringo! You are trespassing on Land Grant Territory! This is stolen land! Do not attempt to buy any property on this Territory, it is stolen and your deed will be invalid! If you are occupying stolen Land Grant Territory, leave now! You have been warned!"
They were all quiet, reading the sign. Derek whistled softly and said, "Man, I'm glad I don't live on any stolen land around here. Sounds like the day of reckoning has come at last for the white cattle barons."
"Yeah," added Kalil, "And payback's a bitch. Come on, let's go."
"What's the next town?" asked Destiny. "Maybe they'll have cell phone coverage. I can't send these pictures; I can't get a signal at all. I don't understand why they don't have cell phone coverage out here. I mean, this is America, right?"
"Chulada. The next town is Chulada," replied Derek. "About two miles ahead." He had his road map, folded to the right section, lying on top of the center console between the front seats. "Doesn't look like much on the map."
State Road 355 ran through wildly beautiful country now, at times alongside flowing creeks choked with willows, oaks and cottonwoods, at times winding up and through the foothills of the Sandia Mountains, with its peaks on their left side. The van crested a rise where the roadway had been blasted out of live rock, leaving jagged granite walls fifty feet high on either side of them. After the top, the road dropped and turned suddenly to the west, and all at once they saw the roadblock, but too late.
Derek slammed on the brakes, coming to a sudden stop just in front of a row of 55-gallon drums. The steel barrels were painted red, and extended across the asphalt from the right shoulder to the yellow centerline. Another row of drums ran across the oncoming lane, but twenty feet further down. Any traffic in either direction would have to come to a complete stop, and weave slowly between the two barricades to continue on their way. The barrels might have been empty, filled with water, or filled with dirt or cement. There was no way to tell by their outward appearance.
Ranya was impressed by the setup. Empty barrels were a bluff, but highly mobile. Water-filled barrels would be too heavy to ram at full speed, yet could still be drained and easily moved around, as long as a water supply was available to refill them on site. Dirt or sand-filled barrels would mean a semi-permanent checkpoint. Vehicles that were parked on either shoulder prevented anyone from driving around the obstacles.
"What in the hell is this?" asked Derek. As if in answer, from behind both of the barricades of steel drums, more than a dozen men suddenly stood up in one movement. Armed men, weapons shouldered, aiming black rifles directly at the van's windshield from a range of twenty feet. Armed men wearing brown berets, and brown t-shirts.
One of them screamed, "¡Salga! Salga del carro! Salga ahora mismo! "
Ranya looked between Derek, the armed men, and Kalil. "They're saying to get out, right now." Sudden fear rose from her guts, nearly paralyzing her.
"Don't worry, it's just the New Mexico Milicia, it'll be cool. Remember, they're on our side," replied Derek. "I'll do the talking. Just chill, all right?" He kept his hands on the steering wheel as two pairs of the men moved around the sides of the nearest wall of barrels, their weapons still shouldered and pointed at the van's windows. The pairs advanced toward each side of the van, remaining a bit in front to avoid a crossfire while aiming at the driver and passenger. The rest of the Milicianos behind the barricade kept their rifles trained on the windshield.
"¿Estas loco, gringo? ¡Ya te dije salga! ¡Ahora--rapido!" The Milicia man shouting the demands kept his rifle aimed directly at Derek, through the open driver's side window, emphasizing his words by thrusting the muzzle forward. Ranya noticed his finger wrapped around the trigger, and she slowly shrank down and back in the van. She recognized the rifles, old M-16A1's, the original Viet Nam era Armalites with the smooth black plastic forward stocks. Each rifle was loaded with a long curved thirty round magazine.
"It's okay, amigos..." said Derek, calmly. "We're on your side. Really, we're coming to help. Umm...estamos...con...ustedes."
Kalil was frozen in his seat, but still whispered, "Derek, man, I think we better..."
"¡Silencio! ¡Callate! ¡Ciera tu boca, y salga--no voy a decirle otra vez!" This Miliciano continued to advance toward the driver, weapon shouldered, until his rifle's quivering muzzle was only a yard from Derek's face.
Derek spoke, slowly and quietly. "Listen, mi amigo...calm down, okay? Calm...down. Tranquilo. I've got a letter of introduction for Professor Robert Johnson, at the university--it explains everything." He slowly moved his right hand toward the center console, brushing aside the folded map, and began to open the hinged compartment on top.
Ranya was almost in the middle of the back of the van, kneeling, her hands on the foam mattress, when a burst of rifle fire exploded just a few feet from her. She saw most of Derek's head disappear in a red eruption and she fell prone, just as Lisa jumped to her feet screaming, "Don't shoot!" There was another burst of fire, and glass fragments rained down on Ranya's back. There were the sounds of the muzzle blasts, and the sounds of bullets pinging through van's sheet metal skin. There were men yelling and orders shouted, and after a few endless seconds, the full-automatic firing abruptly stopped.
The side door of the van was slam-rolled back and Ranya went limp, as many strong hands dragged her out and flung her on the ground. She buried her nose into the dirt, and felt a hot muzzle tip against the back of her neck, and another against her spine.
She was instantly filled with sorrow that she would never see her son, after coming so far. She saw Brad's face, and somehow she felt him beckoning her forward. She saw her father and mother, and a little girl with pigtails running through a sunny field to meet them with her arms held out.
But the expected flashing plunge into eternity didn't come. She still tasted the dirt of this good earth against her lips.
Gradually the ringing in her ears subsided, she heard the moaning and wailing of another girl, and then Ranya began to return to the present. Two college girls. Destiny and Lisa. She slowly turned her head to the side and saw them lying not far from her, a spreading lake of blood under their bodies.
"¡Hijo de la chingada, que maldita porqueria! ¡Que desastre! What a damned disaster! " spat out a voice in guttural foreign-sounding Spanish. "Who the hell told you to fire?"
"The big gringo was reaching for a gun in that box, Jefe! I had to shoot!"
"So, where's the gun, you idiot? Go ahead, check the box!"
Ranya's mind was now spinning at incalculable speed, sifting through the probabilities that added up to life or to death. Without consciously considering the risk or the alternatives, she said, "No hay fusil, Jefe. There is no gun. There is only a letter."
"What? Who speaks? One of the gringas speaks Spanish?"
"Sí, Jefe, I can speak it. The tall one was only reaching for a letter in the box. A letter explaining that we are revolucionarios, voluntarios, coming to join in the people's struggle."
"Is this true? Shit! Then why didn't the fool simply get out of the truck when he was told?"
"He didn't speak our idiom, Jefe. He was truly a fool."
"Get up. Get up. Help her up, you clowns!"
"Gracias Jefe. Gracias. "
***
The "Jefe" was examining the Ruskin-Johnson letter, while they were being driven up State Road 355 to Interstate 40 on the way from Chulada to Albuquerque. They were sitting in the comfortable rear seat of the black crew-cab Ford pickup, which had sped past the doomed van an hour before. Ranya was handcuffed, but the cuffs were in front, and not too tight. At least she was still alive?
Three Milicianos were in the front seat, and four more sat in the cargo bed behind her, their loaded rifles carried in various casual positions, sometimes pointed at one another. All of them wore brown berets and brown t-shirts. The t-shirts were decorated on the front with the state logo, the red "Zia" tribal design from the New Mexico flag, the circle with four lines extending out to the top and bottom and left and right. In the center of the circle was a red star, apparently a new addition to the state symbol.
Some of them wore olive drab or camouflage utility pants, and some wore blue jeans. Some had boots on their feet, and others wore sneakers. Several of their faces hinted at Central and South American Indian origins. Their hair was worn in every length from shaven to shoulder-length. Some of the shaven-headed Milicianos had gang tattoos covering their arms and necks, and even their cheeks and foreheads. These seven troops all carried identical M-16A1 rifles, but the rest of their gear was a hodge-podge of various military cast-offs and civilian daypacks and belt pouches.
When Ranya had been pulled up from the ground, some of the men had lip-smacked lewd sounds at her while suggestively grabbing their groins, and she feared being gang-raped. After being patted down and searched, she had been shoved into the back seat of the pickup truck without any more than a few rough gropes through her jeans and her black t-shirt. Her knife, her compass, and her nylon wallet holding part of her cash as well as her recently acquired Texas driver's license had disappeared.
She wondered if Destiny was alive, and if she was, what was happening to her. The blond had been left crying on the ground at the scene of the attack. Derek and Kalil she knew were dead, and she was all but sure that Lisa was also dead by now, judging by the amount of blood she had seen pooling on the ground beneath her unmoving body. Ranya, although sprayed with blood, had not been injured beyond scrapes and bruises.
The Jefe was sitting across the seat from her, behind the driver. He was the oldest of the Milicianos, at least forty-five or fifty, with a short black Vandyke beard going gray on the sides, beginning at the creases of his mouth. Instead of a brown t-shirt for a uniform, he wore an old style woodland pattern camouflage utility blouse and trousers. Like his men, he wore the brown beret of the Milicia. Unlike his men, he wore a holstered pistol on a green web belt, and carried no rifle. He wore no other visible insignia of rank, but clearly he was an officer or leader, or as they called him, el Jefe--the Chief.
He slipped on reading glasses, and studied Derek's infamous bloodstained letter. "Tell me again what this word means. My English is not very good." He spoke to Ranya in deliberate Spanish, understanding that she was not completely fluent in his tongue.
"It means trusted, trustworthy," she answered in her more than adequate Spanish. "The famous socialist Professor Ruskin from the University of Michigan, he tells Professor Johnson that these four of his students are all trustworthy and valiant, that they believe in the armed revolution and the people's struggle. Professor Johnson should trust them,
and use them in any way he can."
"Huh," he grunted. "But you're not on this list of four. Why not?"
"I met them only this morning. I was traveling by my thumb, hitchhiking. I met them in the gringo town of Mountainview, at breakfast. They offered to bring me to Albuquerque, to join the struggle."
"Well, we're going to see about that."
As they neared Interstate 40 at the town of Tijeras, the Jefe pulled a cell phone from his camouflage blouse pocket and punched several numbers. After a few attempts, he gave up in disgust. "The cowboys, they shoot the cellular telephone towers, and not only for sport, I think. ¡Pendejos! The mobiles work better closer to Burque, most of the time."
"¿Burque? "
"Albuquerque. Same thing." The Jefe removed a walkie-talkie clipped to his web belt, and called ahead to the Milicia checkpoint before Tijeras, to make them aware of their imminent arrival. Finally, he tapped his driver on his shoulder, and the driver took a bright red rag and tossed it onto the dashboard against the windshield. A checkpoint recognition signal, Ranya guessed. A crude form of self-identification, to avoid accidental friendly fire shootings.
"Jefe, the other girl, the blond, was she hit by bullets? Did she live?"
"Stop asking too many questions--some things you don't want to know. Believe me, you don't want to know. But I will tell you that you have much luck that your name is not on this letter! Very much luck. Because these four on this letter, understand me very well, they were never seen, they never came here at all. They have disappeared, and you must forget them completely. That is the ugly reality of dirty war--sometimes accidents happen. Mistakes. Yes, pretty one, you have much luck that your name is not on this letter, or even now you would be with those four in hell."
"But why did your soldiers fire? Why were they so quick to fire? The students were not armed; they were only coming to join the revolution."
"Why did they fire? I'll tell you why. Because gringo cowboys killed almost twenty of our Milicianos, only three hours ago! Slaughtered them on a school bus, and some of them were practically only children. Gringo snipers shot them, just fifty miles northeast from here. Shot children, running for their lives! Then your green van-truck was seen, with a license from a distant Northern state, driven by two gringos--that is why they were very fast to shoot." He folded the fatal letter, slipped it into his breast pocket and sat pensively, looking out his window, away from her.
After a while, he spoke softly, still staring up at the mountains to his left. "You know, I have been in many wars, pretty one. Many wars...for
most of my life. And in war...you either kill, or you are killed. There is no other way." He sighed loudly, and then he said, "Until now, I have not been killed."
A few minutes later she said, "Jefe?"
"No! I'm not your Jefe. You may call me...Carlos."
"Carlos? You're not from around here, are you? Your accent?"
He turned to face her, piercing her with the intensity of his obsidian eyes. "Do you mean I was not born as a Norte Americano, with the silver spoon of the gringo in my mouth? Or that I am not one of the insufferable 'Spanish' New Mexicans, who trace their blood back to the white-skinned Conquistadores? Well, that may be true, but I am an American now and forever more, believe me. I have a driver's license--in fact, I have three. I even voted three times for el Gobernador Deleon! So don't tell me I am not an American. I am three times an American, and what the hell are you? Nothing more than my prisoner."
They were waved through the Milicia checkpoint at Tijeras without stopping, and merged onto I-40 for the fast fifteen mile run west to Albuquerque.
***
Ranya was petrified when she saw the black hood. The Jefe asked for the cubierta when they approached the outskirts of Albuquerque, and the trooper in the right front seat pulled the cloth bag from the glove box and passed it back to him. The Jefe simply told her to put it on, and crouch low on the floor of the truck. She almost fainted when she slipped the dark sack over her head with her cuffed hands, thinking initially that it meant they were going to kill her. Her pulse raced as she began to breathe fast and shallow against the suffocating fabric. It soon occurred to her that if death was to be her fate, they had no reason to keep her from seeing the world around her until her final moment of life. No, she reasoned, hoods were to prevent prisoners from seeing their surroundings, prisoners who might possibly be released.
Unless the Jefe simply wanted to depersonalize her, to dehumanize her, prior to ordering her execution. She tried to banish this possibility from her mind, but could not.
She lay doubled up on the floor of the truck and tried to guess their speed, the turns they made, the traffic and city sounds but it made no sense. She had never been to Albuquerque and had no frame of reference. After ten or twenty minutes--she had no way to tell, exactly--the truck came to a final stop, and she was pulled from it. She could feel warm sunshine on her bare arms and hard pavement under her boots. She was led by a hand on her shoulder for a hundred or so steps and several turns, thrust forward, and heard a door close behind her.
A new voice said in harsh Spanish: "You may remove the cubierta. When you hear the key in the lock, you must put it back on. If you try to escape, you will be killed. Do you understand what I'm telling you, gringa?"
"Sí, lo entiendo. "
She removed the hood and found herself in a cinderblock cell, a narrow room only six feet deep and just a bit wider than the door. Some light seeped in from a mesh-covered air space over the door. There was no bed, cot, or blanket. There was a white plastic five-gallon bucket for a toilet, and a one-liter clear plastic bottle half-filled with water. There was nothing else in her cell. It was 2:25 PM according to her black plastic digital watch. They had not taken it when quickly searching her at the ambush site--evidently, it was too cheap in appearance for even a Miliciano to bother to steal.
The white bucket was clean and empty, so she turned it upside down by the door, and stood on it to look out of the ventilation hole. The opening was the size of one missing cinder block. It was covered on the outside with dusty wire mesh too fine to put her fingers through. Stretching on tiptoes, she had a limited view of the outside. She was looking out onto a narrow white-painted hallway, with a bare fluorescent light tube at the limit of her vision a few yards to her right. Across the hallway was another door, and next to it were more doors to the right and left as far as the rectangular vent permitted her to see, eight doors in all. Each door had a heavy steel hasp. Three were locked with padlocks and five where not. There was no sound or sign of any other prisoners on the hallway.
It was not a real jail, but she knew what it was. She had been in such places under other circumstances. She was a prisoner in a commercial mini-storage. The Milicias were using a private mini-storage business as a covert prison. It made sense. It was probably an easy matter for the new state government to close down a business on any number of pretexts, in order to commandeer it for their own purposes. Most of the mini-storages Ranya had visited were surrounded by their own high security fences or walls. Many were in fact built completely inside of a high surrounding wall, virtual fortresses, with power-operated high security gates. All types of closed panel trucks--bringing prisoners--could come and go without attracting outside attention. Interior alleys would wind between garage-sized units with metal roll-up vehicle doors. The smaller units were usually inside of a structure within the walled complex. There was no doubt in her mind: she was locked up in a mini-storage, a ready-made clandestine prison.
The entrance was not an actual prison cell door; it was crudely made of wood covered with a sheet of steel bolted on the inside. But how could she escape? Even if she could somehow remove the handcuffs and break through the door, an armed guard could be waiting just out of her sight. And she had been warned: if you try to escape, you will be killed. After what she had seen at the Chulada checkpoint ambush, she had no doubt about the sincerity of the threat.
Ranya stepped down from the bucket to consider her situation. It was doubtful the cell was meant for long-term occupancy. There was no bed, no cot, no blanket, nothing. After her secret arrest five years before, she had survived months of solitary confinement in the underground supermax "Tombs" in Illinois. Ranya knew about living in a small cell, although her five by eight foot cell in the Tombs had been a palace by comparison, with its cement bed, mattress, toilet and sink.
She tried pacing, but the room was too small. One, two, about face, turn. One, two, about face, turn. She remembered Brad's story of being crammed inside a small steel locker for hours at a time, a narrow box where he could neither stand up, nor sit down. The "hell box," he had called it. Well, if Brad could survive the hell box, she could survive being locked in a mini-storage unit, even one this small and stifling hot.
Poor Brad, dead and gone these five years... Now, only their unseen and unknown child still linked Brad to her in this world of the living. Their five year old son, now named Brian Garabanda, was somewhere in this city--perhaps only a few miles away. Did he even now feel her nearby presence? Could he somehow sense the physical closeness of his real mother? She had memorized his address; she could find and rescue him, but only if she was free.
But there was no way to get out, not yet. She would have to wait for events to unfold, events that were beyond her control. She sat on the upturned bucket, and sipped some water from the plastic bottle, weighing and considering the story she would have to tell, when the time came.
She didn't have long to wait, only an hour by the glowing face of her digital watch. She heard footsteps stopping outside her door, and she hurried to put on her black hood while the door was unlocked. She stood by the door, it opened, and she was hauled by both shoulders to the right and down the hallway, through a series of turns, out into sunlight, and into another shadowy room.
"Sientate. Sit down." The hood was pulled from her head. The two Milicianos who had led Ranya from her cell pushed her down onto a stool. She was in a bare room about twenty by twenty feet, in the middle of the space. She was facing a long table, the kind used in cafeterias, with folding legs at each end. On the wall behind the table was a sheet-sized red cloth banner, showing a black fist inside of an outlining black star. Above the fist was written ¡Socialismo O Muerte! Socialism or death.
Seated across the table were a woman and two men. The woman sat in the center. She was about fifty, with gray-streaked black hair drawn back in a bun, and narrow reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. She was wearing an austere dark green pants suit, with no frills or adornments. The man on the right was in his thirties, skinny with a receding hairline and a beak-like nose over a thin mustache. He was wearing a white and black checked short-sleeved shirt, open at the collar, and had a notebook in front of him. The man on the left was "Carlos," the Jefe from the black pickup truck, still wearing his camouflage uniform, with his brown beret on the table in front of him. He was puffing on a cigar, ignoring the woman's apparent discomfort.
The stern-faced woman began, with no exchange of pleasantries. "So. You say you were coming to join us, that you are a revolucionaria. Well, I don't believe you. I think that you are a spy. We shoot spies. Why shouldn't we shoot you?"
Ranya answered her without hesitation, operating on both instinct and anger. "I don't know if you shoot spies. Today I only saw your soldiers shoot unarmed students. Students who believed with all their hearts in the people's struggle!"
"How dare you! How dare you!" shrieked the woman, half standing, leaning on the table. "Enrique, don't write that down."
The Jefe turned to her and said, "But it is true, Camarada Inez. She tells only the truth. Our Milicianos did kill the gringo students today."
"But you were there, Carlos! You were there! Why was it not your own fault?"
"The Milicianos at the road block were not my own. It was only an accident of fate that I was there. This prisoner is alive before you now only because I took control. If it was up to your half-trained Milicianos, she would be just as dead as the others."
"Carlos--now is not the time! I insist that you stop this line of critique."
"Fine with me. But she is correct." The Jefe sat back and puffed on his cigar.
Ranya inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. By going on the counteroffensive, she had successfully derailed the comrade commissar's accusatory and threatening line of questioning.
"Let's start this again," said the woman, taking a deep breath and making an effort to appear calm and in control. "Who are you, where do you come from, and why did you come here?"
"My name is Ranya Bardiwell. I escaped from a United States federal camp for political prisoners last Friday. In Oklahoma. I came to New Mexico because I thought I would be safe here from the United States federales. I killed one of them in my escape, and they will kill me if they find me. That is why I am here."
The three stared at her, amazed at this frank revelation.
After a long pause, the man with the notebook asked, "How do you spell your name?"
"R-a-n-y-a, B-a-r-d-i-w-e-l-l." She pronounced the letters in the Spanish way. She was trying her best to use well-accented and grammatical Spanish throughout the questioning, attempting to bond with them at least on that linguistic level.
The woman in the middle asked, "Bardiwell--what kind of name is that? What national ethnic origin?"
"Arab."
"Arab?"
"Yes, Arab. Lebanese-Palestinian Arab," Ranya lied, embellishing her biographical legend to best suit what she guessed to be her audience's prejudices--and outside of their ability to fact-check. Both of her parents were dead, and she had no known relatives in America. They would have to go to Lebanon to discover the truth.
The woman looked at Ranya in a new way. "Palestinian? Are you Muslim?"
"No, my family was Christian."
"And you?"
"I...I have no religion."
"I see." The woman seemed pleased at this. So this identification card here?" The woman held up a shiny driver's license, the one Ranya had been provided by Caylen Barlow at his ranch house.
"I stole it. When I was hitch-hiking across Texas."
After answering a few more questions, she was hooded again and returned to her mini-storage cell, but this time, her handcuffs were removed at the cell door.
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