America Libre (44 page)

“When will you be back?”

Mano looked into her dark brown eyes. “When I can.”

“Is this how it’s going to be, Mano? Not knowing if I’ll ever see you again each time you leave?”

“This is a war now, querida. I wish it could be different.”

Rosa pulled the robe tighter around her. Thirteen months without her husband in the Relocation Community had changed her.
She’d come to understand Mano’s dedication to the rebel cause—and even to support it. She sighed and embraced him. “At least
we’re together again. May God keep you, mi amor.”

Mano gave her a reassuring squeeze, then walked into the living room where he peered cautiously through the windows before
leaving the house. Once outside, he moved along the deserted street with a resolve borne of necessity. He had nothing left
to lose. If captured by the government, Mano would be charged with treason and sentenced to death under the Terrorist Arraignment
Act. Even his wife and son faced a similar fate under the draconian law passed five months earlier. Mano shook his head, trying
to clear his mind of the ever-looming threat. He had a more immediate crisis.

The start of yesterday’s Marcha Offensive had been derailed by a mole who’d alerted the government to the rebel’s nationwide
attacks. A terrible question now plagued Mano: how much damage had the mole caused?

Guided by the mole, the Army had discovered the rebel command center in Los Angeles directing their nationwide offensive.
Mano had returned from his raid to find their communications equipment seized or destroyed and his comrades killed—including
Josefina Herrera.

The enormity of Jo’s death was too much to contemplate. Mano could not afford to dwell on grief. Most of the insurgency’s
leaders were now out of touch or dead, leaving him as the sole survivor of the inner command in the area.

A quarter hour later, Mano approached a duplex on Fraser Avenue. The man who lived inside was his last resort for help—Angel
Sanchez, the mero of Los Verdugos, a street gang that had become the palace guard of the rebel leadership in Los Angeles.

Mano needed to see Angel right away—if the gang leader was still alive.

The armored column raced through downtown Los Angeles stirring eddies of dust in the empty streets. As the vehicles crossed
the viaduct over the vacant Union Pacific rail yards, the voice of the column’s commander came on the radio.

“Tango Five to all units,” Captain Michael Fuller said. “Convoy halt.”

Moving in unison, the five vehicles rolled to a stop and Fuller emerged from the Humvee leading the column. Studying the road
ahead through his binoculars, a tight smile formed on Fuller’s face. The rusting steel doors of the North Gate into the Quarantine
Zone B were open, creating a glowing portal in the long, early morning shadows cast by the ten-foot concrete wall topped with
razor wire.
So far, so good
, Fuller thought with relief.

The North Gate was one of only two passages into the twenty-two square miles of Quarantine Zone B. Although it was a likely
place for an ambush, Fuller was betting the rebels would not be lying in wait at the gate this morning.

He climbed back into the Humvee and picked up the radio handset. “Tango Five to all units. Deploy in combat formation and
proceed into the Quarantine Zone.”

The four tanklike Bradley Fighting Vehicles behind Fuller’s Humvee began moving into position at the head of the column. As
the Bradleys lumbered past the Humvee, Fuller’s driver nervously stroked the blue figurine taped to the dashboard. “All right,
Hefty,” he whispered to the grinning Smurf. “Pancho’s waiting for us inside. Get us through that gate, dude.”

“Don’t worry, Springs,” Fuller said to his driver. “Getting inside won’t be a problem.”
Save up Hefty’s luck for later
, Fuller kept to himself.
We’re going to need it.

Angel Sanchez entered the living room of his duplex apartment, cranking the dynamo on a shortwave radio.

“Good,” Mano said. “You found it.”

The self-charging radio was one of two acquired by Josefina Herrera for the rebel cause in Los Angeles. The other device,
a more elaborate model with better range, had been lost during the Army’s raid on their command center yesterday.

After charging the battery for several minutes, Angel handed the radio to Mano, who tuned it to the familiar setting for the
BBC and placed it on one of the steel milk crates that served as chairs and coffee table in the sparsely furnished living
room. Most wooden furniture in the Quarantine Zones had been burned for fuel, along with almost anything else combustible.

Following a report on the London Stock Exchange, the dulcet-toned BBC announcer reached the news Mano and Angel had been waiting
to hear.

… and now our top news story: the widespread Hispanic insurgent attacks across the United States being called the Marcha Offensive…
Mary Ann Kirby reports.

The scratchy quality of the female voice now on the air indicated her report had been recorded over a telephone line.

When the reporter had finished, Angel turned off the radio and faced Mano. The gang leader had understood much of the news
despite his limited grasp of English. “Muchos muertos, eh?”

“Yes, a lot of dead,” Mano answered, grim-faced. If the news report was accurate, they’d lost nearly half their fighters,
many not much more than boys and girls. Not surprisingly, very few had surrendered. They all knew the consequences of the
Terrorist Arraignment Act.

Mano closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, swamped by a wave of guilt. He was the architect of the Marcha Offensive; he
had insisted their fighters attack military installations and not civilian targets. The price for avoiding the tactics of
terrorists had been very high.
At least very few civilians died
, he reminded himself.

Mano knew the element of surprise was a guerrilla’s primary weapon. The informer had robbed them of that advantage—and the
Army would be quick to exploit their heavy losses.

Mano rose to his feet. “The baldies will be coming, entiendes?” he said, striding toward the door. “We need to be ready.”

“Si, Mano,” Angel replied, falling into step behind him. “I talk con mis vatos. They tell me when baldies come.”

Captain Fuller leaned forward in the Humvee’s seat, scanning the rooftops visible over the Quarantine Zone wall for snipers.
He was relieved—but not surprised—to find their entrance into the zone unopposed.

Most Army patrols entering the nation’s Quarantine Zones over the last year had suffered heavy losses. Michael Fuller, however,
was determined to avoid that fate for the five vehicles and forty-three soldiers under his command. That’s why he’d chosen
this time and place to enter. Still, the thirty-one-year-old captain had qualms about his decision. He was breaking an unwritten
truce with the Panchos by launching an armored patrol into the zone during the Army’s weekly delivery of food.

Once inside the solid steel doors, Fuller’s convoy skirted past a line of open-bed Army trucks loaded with sacks of cornmeal
parked along the boulevard. Civilians in blue arm-bands were hastily transferring the sacks from the six-by-six trucks into
an odd assortment of civilian vehicles while a platoon of National Guardsmen stood warily nearby. The civilians stopped their
work, staring hard at Fuller’s trespassing column.

From the rear bench of the Humvee, Lieutenant Gerald Case gazed expectantly out the window. “You think we’re going to see
some action, Captain?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“C’mon, Cap. What’s wrong with stirring up a little firefight? I missed out on the action at the outpost yesterday. A combat
commendation would be a fast way out of this shithole.”

Case’s words stung Michael Fuller—mostly because they were true. A domestic assignment in today’s Army was for bottom feeders.
Overseas duty was the fast lane to promotion. “Stow it, Case. I’m not going to risk getting anybody hurt to help your career…
or mine.”

“We ain’t likely to get anybody hurt with a platoon of Brads around, Cap,” Case said, nodding toward the four treaded vehicles
trundling ahead of them. Each Bradley was armed with a turret-mounted 25mm chain gun and carried seven heavily armed troopers.

“What about civilians, Case? Don’t you think… Watch the kid, Springs!” Fuller yelled to his driver as a naked toddler wandered
into the path of their vehicle. The screeching of the brakes brought the boy’s mother running into the street.

“Sorry, Captain,” Springs said, his face pale. “I didn’t see the kid. I guess I was looking out for the Panchos.”

Lieutenant Case sneered. “Wouldn’t have made much difference if you’d taken him out. They breed like rats,” he said as the
boy’s mother swooped up the child and retreated into the doorway of a dingy apartment building. “Why we fight these people
on one street and feed them on another one is beyond me, Cap.”

“If we starved the QZs, every person inside would be fighting against us, Case. Beans are a lot cheaper than bullets. And
besides, it’s the right thing to do.”

“They teach you that kind of bleeding-heart crap at West Point, Captain?”

“Yeah, right after the mandatory class on the virtues of appeasement.”

Case stared at Fuller blankly. “Appeasement?”

“Never mind, Lieutenant. We don’t have the time right now.”

“Well, explain this for me, will you, Captain… How the hell did an Academy ring knocker like you wind up with this dead-end
posting anyway?”

Fuller turned slowly toward Case. “Lieutenant, your mouth is going to get you in deep shit one of these days… possibly very
soon.”

As their convoy drove deeper into the zone, Fuller silently cursed the politicians who’d hatched the Quarantine and Relocation
Act—and then left the military to clean up their mess.

Two years after the bill was enacted, most Americans now saw the attempt at the largest ethnic internment in the nation’s
history as an epic failure. The government had halted construction of new Relocation Communities for Hispanics in North Dakota
after the deaths of over two thousand internees during the first winter. Meanwhile, the once-temporary Quarantine Zones—built
around Hispanic urban enclaves to end the bloody street battles between vigilantes and Hispanics—had become rebel strongholds
from which the Panchos launched strikes and then melted back into the civilian population.

The last twenty-four hours, however, had changed the game.

Yesterday’s nationwide offensive had been a disaster for the Panchos. Thanks to a rebel informer, the Army had anticipated
the insurgent attacks on U.S. military installations and decisively repulsed the assaults. But their mole had delivered an
even bigger win. They had uncovered the rebel command center directing the nationwide attacks—an abandoned Holiday Inn near
the center of Los Angeles Quarantine Zone B.

A twelve-trooper Delta Force team arriving in two choppers had wiped out the enemy personnel at the command center and hauled
away all the rebel communications equipment the helos could hold before hurriedly pulling out. Deep in Pancho-held territory,
the small Delta team risked being overrun if they’d tried to hold the position. Now the brass wanted a more thorough intelligence
sweep of the Pancho command center.