Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (50 page)

After the loss of her mother to cancer, the loss of her father to the federal assassins, the loss of Brad Fallon in the river, the loss of her son only minutes after his birth, and the loss of five years of her life in the camps, Ranya had thought that she had lost the ability to experience normal human feelings.  Nevertheless, today had been too much even for her armor-plated soul.  Today’s new store of pain penetrated to the remaining core of her humanity, and found a tender spot to stab with a burning poker, and she wept with her face in her hands for a long time.

Eventually she returned to the present, staring at glowing red and amber LED lights.  The soft dashboard display lights told her that the Solaris now had only 12% battery power remaining.  The car was a two-seater, configured like a micro station wagon.  She guessed that all of the space in the back beneath the small cargo area was given over to batteries. The car was not going to recharge from sunlight any time soon, that was a given.  At best, even a small urban commuter like this one was going to get only a supplemental boost from the black solar panels contoured into the hood and the roof. She assumed the car had a cable for recharging from household power, and she found an orange cord rolled up on a spool, inside of where a gas cap might have been.  When she put the plug into the garage’s outlet, she only confirmed that the house power was off.

After failing to find an outlet with power, she examined the garage by penlight, especially where it joined the rest of the house.  There was an interior door leading from the garage into the house, and it had only a doorknob lock.  The houses in Glenwood all appeared to be variations on the same layout, so she guessed the Garabanda’s house would also have a similar interior garage door.

The house where her son was living lay at an angle to her left across the street.  After traveling hundreds of miles to find him, Brian was now sleeping only a hundred feet away.  The thought crossed Ranya’s mind to just walk across the street and ring the doorbell, gun in hand.  There was no car in front of the Garabanda residence, but their garage door was rolled down, so their car might have been inside.

After watching for an hour from the empty garage, she slipped out to do a walking recon around the Garabanda’s house.  The .45 went under her belt, hidden beneath her black sweatshirt. Instead of a grass lawn, their small front yard was covered in pebbles, interspersed with small desert plants and bushes.  After gingerly stepping from the sidewalk into the dark space between the Garabanda house and that of his neighbor on the right, a floodlight on the roof snapped on, and she had to hop back and quickly walk up the street and out of sight.  She knew that these motion-activated lights often gave false alarms, but still she wondered if it had alerted Special Agent Garabanda.  

A gunfight on his front sidewalk was not what she had in mind.  After returning to her hiding place in the garage, she decided to wait for dawn and signs of activity.  If the Garabanda family went to church, she thought she might boldly cross the street and ambush them at gunpoint when they backed their car out of their garage.  She could take them unaware, carjack them and climb into the backseat with the barrel of her .45 leveled at their heads.  If they didn’t go to church…well, she would have to think of another ruse to gain entrance to their house.

Once she managed to overcome and subdue them, she would escape in the Garabanda’s own gasoline-powered vehicle.  She tried to guess what type of a car an FBI agent might have in his garage.  Perhaps a big sedan, or an SUV? She wondered why no second car was parked on their driveway, or on the street in front of their house.  The homes on this street had only single-car garages, but surely, the Garabanda’s had two cars?  Or had the difficult economy forced them to economize?

In the abstract, her mission had seemed so uncomplicated.  Find this address, grab her child and leave.  Now, back in the Solaris and looking across the street at his house, it seemed anything but simple. She wondered if Brian would scream and struggle, and how she would deal with him if he did.  It wouldn’t be easy to subdue the two adults, while gaining control of her five-year-old son.

At four in the morning she switched on the car radio, figuring the extra electrical output would be minimal. The AM band was preset to a Spanish language station, which dramatically announced itself as
¡Radio Regeneración, La Voz de la Revolución!
  Two men were discussing the assassination of the governor, and the Anglo fugitive who was the main suspect.  The alleged sniper’s name meant nothing to her, but she sat straight up when they mentioned the rifle that had been found in the Regent Hotel behind an ice machine: a Remington, in 7mm magnum caliber!

On Wednesday at the rifle range west of the city, she had sighted-in three scoped bolt-action hunting rifles, and she could recall each of them in detail.  One of them was a Remington 700, in 7mm magnum.  Ramos had insisted the rifles be zeroed in at only 200 yards, and she mentally estimated the distance from the stage, across the Civic Plaza, to the Regent Hotel.  She would never forget the sight of the blood and tissue jetting out of Governor Deleon’s back.  Now she had little doubt that she had personally fired the killing rifle, that she had zeroed it in and readied it for that single fatal shot.  

It was time to get out of New Mexico, way past time.

***

The porch light illuminating the number 4875
gradually faded, as the dawn spread over Albuquerque.  Morning twilight was a long and gradual process, with the rising sun still hidden behind the Sandia Mountains.  The Garabanda’s house had an angled roof topped with red Spanish tiles.  Like all of the homes in the neighborhood, its stucco surfaces were painted in shades of tan and beige.  About half of the homes on the street had grass front lawns, and half seemed to be using pebbles instead, like 4875.  She’d never seen pebble “lawns” before, and guessed that the cost of watering real grass might be exorbitant, given the dry local climate.  Some of the homes on Camino Del Cielo were two story or split-levels, but most, including the Garabanda’s, were one story high.  If she had to go in and take over the house at gunpoint, its single-story layout would make the task much easier. 

There was a one-car garage on the left side of the Garabanda’s house, and Ranya presumed that one of their cars was inside it.  Again she wondered where their other car was, assuming that they had a second car. Perhaps it was in the shop, or perhaps, she thought hopefully, Garabanda was away on FBI business. It would greatly simplify grabbing Brian, if she had to deal with only his phony mother.  If their primary vehicle was now parked inside of their garage, as she assumed, then she could get Brian into the car and under control before taking off with him.  The most difficult part of the snatch could be done out of sight, avoiding any ugly scenes on the street in view of the neighbors.  She could leave Brian’s bogus mom tied up inside the house, or take her along and dump her off in some remote place on the way out of New Mexico.

Ranya went over her primary immediate action plan.  If the garage door opened and their car backed outside, and it looked like they were heading to church, she would wait until they returned.  When they did, she would quickly walk across the street and follow the car inside the garage while the door was still rolled open, and jump them at gunpoint.  If they didn’t go to church but she saw them inside, she considered various ruses for getting into the house. She could ring their doorbell with a clipboard, like a polltaker or petition signature gatherer.  Did people still do things like that in Albuquerque, she wondered? Would they be too suspicious to open their door to a stranger, even a woman on Sunday morning?

She imagined that they would open their door for a young woman on their doorstep on a Sunday morning.  Why wouldn’t they? Once the door was opened, she could use her .45 to force her way inside and subdue them.  She ran through various scenarios and permutations of scenarios.

What if the wife opened the door, but the husband was in another room? What if she screamed and alerted him?  She went over possible variations until she couldn’t think anymore.  Finally, she decided that she would just have to rely on her instincts when the opportunity came.

***

“Mommy, I gotta go to the bathroom.”
The five-year-old boy was buckled into a child’s car seat, diagonally behind the driver on the passenger side.  Boxes, bins and bundles were packed into almost every other cubic foot of the vehicle.

“Brian, we just left, and I asked you if you had to go.”  His mother was driving her mid-sized SUV.  She was wearing faded jeans, a gray jersey and running shoes, ready for a long road trip.

“But I didn’t have to go then!”

“That was only five minutes ago.”

“But I can’t help it—I’ve gotta go!”  

“You know, we’re going to be in the car all day.  You’re going to have to learn how to hold it.  We won’t be able to stop for you every five minutes.”

“But I have to go!”

Karin Bergen sighed loudly in exasperation.  “Okay Bri-bri, let’s see what we can do.”  She picked up a slim walkie-talkie from the center console of her Toyota 4-Runner.  She was following behind a black Chevy Avalanche pickup, which was pulling a trailer.  “Gretch, it’s me, over.”

“What’s up?”  Gretchen Bosch’s gravelly voice came back through the radio.

“Brian’s gotta go to the john.  I’m going to swing by my old house.”

“Okay girlfriend.  We’re early—we’ll still be at the playground by eight.”

“Roger.”

Brian asked, “Mommy, is Daddy at our house?”

“No sweetie, we’re going to see him at your old playground.”

“Mommy, is Daddy coming with us?”

“No sweetie, Daddy has to stay here.”

“But why?”

“You know why.”

He said nothing for half a minute, thinking about this.  “Mommy, how far is Sandy Eggo from Albakirky?”

“Very far, Bri-bri, almost a thousand miles.  It’ll take us all day.  All day today, and some of tomorrow.  We’re stopping halfway tonight, so we’ll be there tomorrow.”

***

Ranya was scrunched down
low in the driver’s seat of the Solaris, when a big black crew-cab pickup truck pulling a trailer rolled up Camino del Cielo and passed in front of her.  The truck was followed by a silver-gray SUV, which slowed, and made a left into the driveway of 4875!  The truck continued and made a round U-turn at the next four-way stop sign intersection a half block up the street.  Then the truck slowly came back down the street, and pulled to the curb directly in front of 4875.  What the heck? Had the Garabanda family been away over night? Were they returning from a vacation? Why two vehicles? Was it FBI-related business? That might make sense.  The truck was jammed with cargo in the back, covered by a gray plastic tarp. The silver SUV in the driveway had a black luggage carrier attached to its roof rack.

The driver’s door of the silver SUV opened, and a woman with a thick mane of blond hair stepped out.  She walked around to the other side, opened the rear passenger door and leaned inside.  In a moment, a toddler climbed down.  Ranya’s heart raced, she grabbed for Basilio’s small binoculars. Was she seeing her own son, who was now named Brian Garabanda?

The blond woman was wearing jeans and a gray sweater.  Ranya thought the child was about the right size to be a five year old, but he was wearing pink overalls.  Was this child a girl? Then the driver’s door of the black pickup parked on the street opened, and a man stepped out, wearing denim farmer’s overalls, showing muscular tattooed arms.  His light brown hair was cut very short on the sides, and brushed straight up in a crew cut on top.  Was this Special Agent Alexandro Garabanda?  If so, he was undoubtedly armed at this very moment.  FBI agents always were armed, she thought, on duty or off.  

He was standing directly in the path Ranya would take to approach the woman and child in the driveway.  She briefly considered attempting a one hundred foot pistol shot with her untested .45, but ruled it out as unrealistic.  Despite it being an excellent pistol, she had never fired it.  She could not know with certainty where its bullets would hit, when fired at a target a hundred feet away.  

At best, taking the shot would result in a suburban street battle with an uncertain outcome, especially if the agent was wearing concealed body armor.  To make matters worse, his black pickup was blocking the driveway, trapping the silver SUV.  Even if she nailed the man in the coveralls, she would have to somehow race across the street and seize Brian from his false mother, and then what, escape in the pickup truck, towing the trailer? Or move the truck, and escape in the SUV?

The Dragunov rifle was behind her in the back of the mini-wagon, covered by a blanket.  Could she get the four foot long rifle unlimbered and into position, sticking out of her driver’s side window, without attracting the attention of the man waiting in the street? No, she decided, and besides, the angles were all wrong for shooting from her driver’s seat position. She’d have to climb out of the car to make the shot.  He was certain to notice all of that preparatory movement.

And even if she managed to shoot both adults, could she make a clean escape from New Mexico with Brian, after waking up the entire subdivision with gunfire, and leaving two corpses lying on the street? How would Brian be likely to react to seeing his “parents” shot down? How would he react to a strange woman grabbing him, after witnessing that kind of violence?

The blond woman and the child walked up the short path to the front door.  She put a key into the lock and both of them disappeared inside. The blond had her own house key, so she must be Garabanda’s wife.

The man standing by the pickup turned and stretched his arms out, and bounced on his toes, apparently limbering up.  For a moment, he seemed to look straight at Ranya.  She was already hiding far down in the seat, with just her eyes above the dashboard.  She froze like a deer, hoping the interior of the garage was in deep shadow from the man’s point of view.  Then Ranya noticed something unusual about the shape of the man, very unusual, and it suddenly became clear—all too clear—he was a she! The big guy with the brush cut and the muscular tattooed arms was a woman! A very big woman, but still a woman, with breasts and all!