America Libre (30 page)

“Let’s hope the last of our am-nite doesn’t go to waste.”

From the passenger’s seat of the lead Humvee, Lieutenant Jason Kroy stared blankly at the vacant stores and factories along
Lakeview Avenue, his mind far away. A third-generation soldier, Kroy envied his younger brother, assigned to a Ranger unit
in Iran.
That’s where the real soldiers are
, he said to himself dejectedly.

While pondering the bleak prospects of his own career, Kroy heard a thundering boom from the road behind him.

“What the hell was that?” he yelled to his driver.

“I dunno,” the driver said nervously. “It sounded like a bomb or something.”

Kroy grabbed the radio’s handset. “Convoy leader to all units… Pull over! Pull over!” he yelled into the mike.

Emerging from his Humvee, Kroy saw a large cloud of smoke and dust billowing from the causeway across the lake nearly half
a kilometer back. His stomach churning, the lieutenant counted his convoy. There were only seven trucks along the road behind
him. The last truck and the T.E.V. were missing.

Kroy ran to the second vehicle. “Contact HQ, Sergeant! Tell them we’ve been ambushed and the convoy is going to need protection!
Have them send air cover if possible. Then escort the rest of the convoy to the garrison. I’m going back to check this out.
Have them send me any reinforcements they can!”

While the remainder of the convoy got under way, the lieutenant jumped back into his own vehicle. “Get us turned around, Willard!”
he said to his driver. “We’re going back to the causeway.”

The driver’s eyes widened with alarm. “You sure you wanna do that, LT?”

“Willard, shut up and drive,” Kroy said and then turned to the soldier in the backseat. “Meyers, man the 50!”

The young soldier climbed onto the Humvee’s center platform, peeking cautiously from the machine-gun turret as they sped down
the road.

“We’ve got a Humvee coming back,” Mano said, looking through the binoculars.

Jo picked up the vu-phone she’d rigged to emit a detonating signal. “I’m ready with charge number two,” she said, her finger
poised over the final digit that would ignite the explosives.

Anticipating the return of a security detachment from the convoy, Mano had placed a second set of charges in an abandoned
car near the causeway to give them another chance at a precisely timed blow. Angel and two vatos were hiding near the kill
zone. Their task would be to recover any weapons following the attack.

“They’re getting closer,” Mano said calmly as the Humvee closed on the abandoned car. “Get ready.”

Then, in the corner of his binoculars, Mano detected movement—three ragged figures walking nearby. The Humvee slowed as it
approached the men.

Jo could sense the time for detonating the charges was lapsing. “What’s the matter, Mano?”

“I think we’ve got some onlookers. Disable the charges, Jo.”

“Onlookers?”

“Yeah, they’re dregs,” Mano said as he studied the three scruffy men through the binoculars. “The explosion at the causeway
must have drawn them.”

“Mierda!” Jo cursed, tapping in the abort code.

As Mano watched, the soldiers began frisking the men against the abandoned car. “It looks like the soldiers think the dregs
may have been involved.”

“Is there anything we can do?”

“Call Angel and tell him and his vatos they need to withdraw. This looks like one fish that’s going to get away.”

Hours later, as Jo and Mano sat at the DDP conference table planning their next operation, Angel entered the room, followed
by three Verdugos.

Walking with ominous slowness, the mero moved very close to Mano and stood before him, chest extended, a cold glare in his
eyes. “You… are woman… today,” he said bitterly.

Mano rose to his feet and smiled. “If you’re trying to insult me, Angel, you’ll have to do better than that. There are many
women as brave as any man. This is one of them,” he said, gesturing toward Jo.

Angel looked at Jo for a moment, then softened his tone. “Why you no attack?”

“Because those three men in the street were innocent. They were not our enemies. We are warriors, Angel. The death of those
three men would have made us murderers. Asesinos. Their blood would never wash from our hands. Me entiendes?”

“I join you to fight baldies,” Angel said, his anger dissipating. “Not to run.”

“You have the heart of a lion, Angel. This war is far from over. You’ll get a lot more chances to fight,” Mano assured him.
“Get some sleep. We’ve got more to do tomorrow.”

Appeased, Angel nodded to his vatos and they exited the room.

“That was scary,” Jo said softly. “Can we trust him, Mano?”

“You always know where you stand with Angel.”

“That’s not a very persuasive argument.”

“Some people don’t fight for ideas, Jo. They fight because they hate. As long as we have an enemy, Angel won’t betray us.”

As Mano spoke, he realized how much the words applied to himself as well.

M
ami, wake up. Come see!” Pedro said, gently shaking his mother’s arm.

Struggling to stay warm under a scratchy wool blanket, Rosa rolled toward her son on the hard bunk bed and opened one eye.
Across the crowded Quonset hut, she saw the weak light of dawn through a small window.

“Keep your voice down, m’hijo. You’ll wake someone,” she whispered to her son.

“OK, Mami,” the boy whispered back. “But you’ve got to come see this… Elena, too.”

Hearing her brother’s voice, Elena stirred in the bed next to Rosa’s.

“Just a minute, m’hijo. I need to dress your sister,” Rosa said as she rose from the bed. After slipping into a robe, she
bundled Elena into several layers of mismatched clothing recently donated to the Community. The early November weather was
colder than anything Rosa had ever known. A lifelong resident of Los Angeles, she shuddered at the thought that the year’s
coldest weather was still ahead.

Once they were dressed, Pedro eagerly took Rosa and Elena by the hand and dragged the sleepy pair toward the doorway. Rosa
gasped as they stepped outside. The camp had been transformed.

Rosa had seen pictures of snow. But firsthand, she found it breathtaking. There was a purity and stillness to the stark landscape
that cameras failed to capture. As Rosa turned her head, the glow of the pale morning sun followed her gaze across the white
contours of the land, igniting a moving wave of glittering reflections. For a moment, she and the children stood in silent
awe.

Then Pedro broke the spell. “Come on, Elena!” the boy yelled, dashing into the knee-deep snow. Elena ran stiffly behind her
brother, waddling in her bulky clothes. The children romped in the snow, giddy with joy, their laughter warming Rosa. It was
a sound she’d heard rarely since their arrival in the Community.

Rosa’s thoughts turned to Mano. She knew her husband would relish this moment of joy with the children. Then the questions
that tormented her every day returned.
Is he still alive? Is he with that woman? Will I ever see him again?

Part of her wanted to put Mano behind her and move on, but she could not. She clung desperately to the belief that their family
would be reunited. It was the focus of the prayers she recited daily before her small statue of the Blessed Virgin.

The small offerings of food Rosa laid before her shrine had become true sacrifices. The meals at the Community’s mess hall
had been adequate at first. But lately, the portions had shrunk severely. Unknown to Rosa, politics and bureaucracy were behind
the reduction in their rations.

To mollify the financial obligations of the Bates resolution, the Relocation Communities had been presented to Congress as
self-sustaining entities. The architects of the Quarantine and Relocation Act had assumed most Hispanics were farm laborers
who would quickly become adept at subsistence farming. Adequate food supplies, along with seeds and fertilizer, had been allocated
to the Communities during the planting seasons of spring and early summer. By fall, government officials expected the Relocation
Communities to begin their harvests and become essentially self-sufficient. As a result, food rations were radically curtailed.

In reality, over ninety percent of the Hispanics in the U.S. were urban dwellers with little farming experience of any kind.
Nevertheless, many industrious souls within the Relocation Communities had attempted gardens, but their efforts were hampered
by a lack of implements. Fearing hoes and rakes would be turned into weapons, the local security forces had withheld the garden
tools provided by the planners.

In addition, the Relocation Communities were composed primarily of Hispanics from the suburbs. This had happened because Hispanics
like the Prados, who lived outside the Quarantine Zones, were given priority for relocation. As a former inner-city dweller,
Rosa was frequently reminded that her background was much less affluent than that of most of the roughly twenty thousand residents
of Community Number Eight. She also realized that the Hispanics in the Community were a softer, more docile bunch than the
people still in the Quarantine Zones.

Rosa turned her attention back to the children. They had been playing in the snow for over twenty minutes and their excitement
had waned.

“I’m cold, Mami,” Elena said, walking toward her mother.

Rosa picked up her shivering daughter and noticed her clothes were wet. Elena’s exertions had melted the snow that clung to
her, and the damp clothes were cooling rapidly.

“Pedro, it’s time to go back inside,” Rosa called out to her son.

“Just a little while longer, Mami… please!”

“I need help with your sister, Pedro. She’s cold and needs to go inside.”

The boy responded immediately, running to Rosa’s side and helping her carry Elena inside.
He’s like his father
, Rosa thought proudly.

By evening, Elena was beginning to show signs of fever. Rosa gave up her blanket to cover her daughter and sat shivering beside
Elena throughout the night, readjusting the covers each time the feverish child tossed in bed.

She took Elena to the Community infirmary the following morning. After three hours in the unheated waiting room, the doctor
informed her that her daughter had contracted a virus. “There’s no medication that will help,” the Army physician said dryly.
“It’s something going around the camp.”

The fever continued for the next three days. Rosa watched her child grow weaker, powerless to ease her suffering. On the fourth
night, as Rosa hovered once again by her bed, Elena’s labored breathing gradually slowed and finally stopped. Drained and
numb after four days without sleep, Rosa watched her daughter’s life ebb away, too exhausted to mourn. She lay down wearily
next to Elena and held her until morning.

The day that followed was a blur. Accompanied by guards, a doctor came to take Elena’s body away. Delirious with grief, Rosa
fought to stop them and was held down and sedated. When she awoke later in the day, she was alone in the dormitory.