Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (85 page)

Ranya shook her head.  “I wouldn’t use a cell phone then.  No way.”

“Then you’re one in a hundred.  Most people start hyperventilating if you move their cell phones ten feet out of their reach.  Okay, that’s done— we’re good to go on their phones.  Now let me see about getting into the homeland security camera net.”  Alex typed on his laptop, going through a series of new web pages and logins.  “This might take a little time, I haven’t done this is California.  Oh—that was easy, here we go, I’m getting it.  That’s it!  I’m in.  Check this out, let’s see where we are.”

A color street map of San Diego appeared on the laptop’s computer screen. Alex zoomed down the scale until the screen was just showing the city blocks immediately around the Fed Tower.  Dozens of tiny camera icons appeared.  He clicked on one, and a few seconds later they were rewarded with a live view of Broadway, taken from a high angle down towards the County Courthouse.  The camera view took up a quarter of the screen, leaving the rest for the map.  

He clicked another camera icon, closer to the Fed Tower, and saw a view from across the street down toward the main entrance foyer, and the fountain in the center of its own small plaza.  There were a pair of revolving entrance doors in the center of the building, and anti-vehicle obstacles disguised as massive flower planters evenly spaced along the curb on Broadway, fifty feet away.  The first three stories of the tower were concrete, with no windows.  The place was built to be a hard target.

“Okay, we’ll save that one.  Let’s keep looking…”

“Can you do this anywhere, in any city?”

“Not everywhere, but in cities—especially downtown—well, there’s almost nowhere that’s not covered by cameras.  I can’t tilt, pan or zoom though—we’re just getting the raw feed.  Whatever the camera sees, we see. Okay now, that’s a good one.”

The camera showed the side of the Fed Tower, overlooking the entrance to its parking garage.  

“That’s another keeper—I’ll save that one too.  Now, if we keep an eye on the front doors and the garage entrance, we’ll either see them walking out, or driving out.  Let me split the screen up so those two views stay on top, and then you can play with it.  You should get used to navigating around the city.  It’s just like a video game.  Once you get the hang of it, it’s sort of like swinging from building to building. You can go around the block, follow somebody, whatever you want.”

“What happened to just sitting in undercover cars on a stakeout, eating fast food and telling corny cop jokes?”

“Oh, that’s old school.  We still do it when we have to, but in a city like this, why bother?  And why take the risk? If we hang around down on the street, we’re more likely to compromise ourselves than anything else. I don’t want to even go near the Fed Tower, not until it’s time to get Brian. That building is watched like a hawk—count on it. All of these surveillance cameras we’re looking at? They have people paid to watch them, 24-7.  Walk past the Pacific Majesty a few times, it’ll be noticed, and it’s all recorded.  No, it’s better to just stay away from there, and use their own cameras against them.  If we see Karin’s 4-Runner coming out, we’ll be able to follow it by her cell phone’s GPS position.  If we already know where she’s going from her cell phone calls, we can get there first.  Once I find her car parked outside on a street, I’ll stick a tracker under her luggage carrier. That big black box on her roof rack is perfect; I can hide a tracker under it easy.  That way, even if she turns her cell phone off or leaves it home, we’ll be able to follow her car.  Plus, the luggage box makes it easy to follow her car in traffic.  We won’t have to be too close behind her.  We can stay a few cars back, just eyeballing that luggage box. That’s

important, since we only have one car. We can’t afford to spook her.”

“Once we find her, then what?” asked Ranya.

“If it’s just Karin and Brian, I’ve got some non-lethal happy gas. Karin doesn’t know you from Adam, so you can walk right up to her, and give her a little spritz in the face.  She’ll be disoriented, sort of tripping out. I’ll get Brian, and that’s it.  We’ll drive straight out to the Golden Arrow and get on the airplane.”

“What happens to Karin?”

“After you give her the happy gas?  She staggers around like a drunk for a few hours, or she falls asleep.  Not exactly a reliable witness, either way. Cops won’t listen to a word she says.  They’ll assume she’s either on drugs, or she’s a lunatic.  She won’t make any sense.”

“You think it’ll work like that? That easy?”

“Why not?  They have no idea we’re in town, so they won’t have their guard up.”

“What if ‘the Beast’ is with them?”

“Gretchen Bosch? We’ll just have to improvise.  If the happy gas doesn’t work, I’ve also got a Taser, and if it comes down to it, then there’s always bullets—they work pretty good too. We’ll see.  You want to play with the cameras now?”

“Sure.”

***

Chino and Salazar took off on the Kawasaki
as soon as it was unloaded from the Otter.  Chino sat in front, Salazar was behind him with a compact MAC-10 submachine gun tucked against his chest, concealed beneath a black wind breaker.  Both men wore black helmets with dark face shields. The two former San Diego gang members had the mission of making contact with their old
compadres
, in order to arrange for ground transportation and a place for the team to stay.  Guarded cell phone calls had been made, and their arrival was expected, but the actual arrangements had to be made face-to-face.

Comandante Ramos didn’t worry about their physical safety driving through San Diego.  There was almost nothing as dangerous in a city as two men on a motorcycle.  A
moto
could outmaneuver any car, and the man in back with the weapon could defend them, or attack a target with concentrated full-auto firepower.  The bike could then escape through heavy traffic or squeeze through tight spaces, or even go off road to evade pursuit.  There was a very good reason why two men on a
moto
struck mortal fear into executives from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego: it was frequently the last thing that they saw, before being riddled with bullets.

It was after seven PM when they returned to the airfield. The motorcycle was leading a jacked-up four-wheel-drive Dodge crew cab pickup, with custom bumpers and oversized tires.  The truck had a low camper shell over the back, which matched the truck’s dark blue color.  The narrow side windows of the camper shell had been removed, and Ramos knew that this was to allow
pistoleros
with AK-47s or other serious weapons to fire from inside.  It was a war-wagon, and its message was clear: attacking it would only be undertaken at great risk to the attacker.

The truck pulled up close to the Otter, and they loaded their baggage, weapons bags, and surveillance equipment into the back.  Ramos noted the thick steel plates welded inside the cargo bed as armor.  The rear bumper was made of parallel steel pipes.  Foot-long horizontal steel rods were welded to the bumper and tailgate, pointing rearward as anti-ramming protection.  Any vehicle crashing into the truck from behind would have its radiator and engine impaled.

The
mestizo
driver of the truck had some of the same neck tattoos as Salazar, including 13-13 in Germanic script. Like Chino, he also had several red and blue teardrops tattooed beneath the corners of his eyes, representing friends lost, and enemies killed.

Chino and Salazar again rode the motorcycle ahead of the truck as they left the airport.  Corky Gutierrez stayed with the plane.  He was useless to them beyond his skills as a pilot, and he could best serve their needs by keeping the Otter ready to fly.  Mendoza stayed at the airport with Corky, to “assist” him.  They all understood his true function: to eliminate the possibility of Corky flying away, and leaving them stranded.

Ramos sat behind the driver in the four-door crew cab truck, next to Lieutenant Almeria, his communications officer.  Almeria seemed out of place among the tough
vatos
. This soft fellow with his gold-rimmed eyeglasses looked completely noncombative, but his special skills were essential to the success of the mission.  Genizaro sat in the front passenger seat, a .45 caliber MAC-10 machine pistol on his lap.  It was loaded with a thirty round magazine extending from its grip, and a long thick suppressor fixed to its stubby barrel.

This was Chino and Salazar’s city, their home turf, and Ramos worried about them keeping their edge and staying focused on the mission. They had been disciplined troops in Nuevo Mexico, but there would be many old temptations to revisit in San Diego.  The sooner this job was completed, the better.  Ramos knew that every day the team remained in California, they would tend to drift away from his control.

He hoped the mission could be completed in two or three days, maximum.  The boy Brian Garabanda was the focus point, the bait. All the Zetas had to do was find him and watch him, and then they would find Bardiwell and the FBI agent.  The two traitors would be like a pair of tigers stealthily approaching a staked goat, unaware of the hunter waiting in his concealed blind. They had the cell phone number of the boy’s mother, and Almeria would be able to listen to her calls, and track her location. It was a reasonable assumption that the FBI agent would have a similar capacity. The trick was in anticipating Garabanda’s moves, and outmaneuvering him.  Their great advantage was that the FBI agent didn’t know that while stalking, he was also being stalked.

The entire airport occupied its own mesa, surrounded by miles of chain link fence topped with razor wire.  The Kawasaki led them to a highway that ran directly past the end of the airfield.  They exited through an automatic gate operated by armed guards, and quickly merged onto the 805 freeway, heading south to where they would stay for the night in a house provided by Chino’s old
carnals
, his gang brothers.  Both sides of the freeway were walled in by twenty-foot-tall concrete noise barriers, which Ramos couldn’t help but think were more truthfully people barriers, dividing the city into more “manageable” segments.  The concrete walls were covered in murals and graffiti for miles, with shifting gang symbols denoting who controlled which territory.

The freeway soared over some valleys on high bridges, and then ran up other canyons and across the mesa tops.  Compared to Albuquerque, some of the green hillsides reminded Ramos almost of Hawaii, or at least of Mazatlan or Puerto Vallarta. There were many types of palm trees, and a wide variety of unusual tropical species never seen in arid New Mexico. Luxury homes partly supported on stilts were built one above another on some of the slopes.  

They followed as the motorcycle took an exit into a middle class neighborhood of small homes, and a few minutes later the bike made a series of quick turns and drove beneath the highway they had just been on. One shoulder of the mesa was cut off by the highway, leaving a neighborhood stranded by itself.  The only way into this small section was through the underpass tunnel they had just penetrated.

They followed the motorcycle through more turns and finally to the end of a cul-de-sac, with pleasant upper-middle class homes on either side. At the end of the traffic circle was a massively high and thick hedge.  An archway had been carved into this wall of vegetation, just large enough for one vehicle.  A chain-link gate rolled open behind the hedge at their approach. On the other side of the green wall, they entered a new realm, a small estate of a few acres.

This secluded property occupied the tip of one finger of the mesa.  In the center of the neatly trimmed lawn, there was an ultra-modern three-story white custom home composed of plate glass, angles, terraces and balconies. The area around the house was landscaped with luxuriant tropical plants, rock gardens and decorative pools with small fountains and waterfalls.  There was a line of tall palm trees along the property’s cliffside border in the back.  Beyond the palms, steep canyon slopes fell away, and another mesa rose a mile beyond.

No other nearby houses were visible, the property was enclosed entirely within the wall of hedges on the landward side.  Ramos thought that the home was not quite as large or majestic as his villa back in Albuquerque, but it was certainly in the same league, and its geography made it a nearly impregnable fortress.  Dusk was falling, and the lights of the homes on the hillside across the canyon were flickering on.  It wasn’t as dramatic as his view of Albuquerque and the Rio Grand Valley, but it was very charming, with the row of palm trees behind the mansion silhouetted against the orange and pink sky.

Two men in jeans and t-shirts were playing ping-pong on a table near the opening in the hedge.  Another man played Frisbee with a trio of enormous Rottweilers, who leaped and rolled on the lawn, battling each other for the chewed-up yellow disc.

This was the home of Chino’s San Diego
padrino
or godfather, within “
La Eme
,” the Mexican Mafia.  Here, Comandante Basilio Ramos’s standing within the Milicia de Nuevo Mexico would count for almost nothing, and he would have to depend on Chino and Salazar to procure what they needed to complete their mission.  Primarily they required a clean vehicle, which could transport them back and forth into the high security zone of downtown San Diego. 

Here, Basilio Ramos could no longer simply give orders.  Here, there were no camouflage uniforms, no brown berets with Falcon insignias, and no web belts with holstered pistols to denote authority.  Here, they were all just
carnals, cholos,
wearing jeans and casual shirts.  Here, he could only rely on the loyalty that he had instilled in his men over the past months.  If Chino and Salazar decided to desert him now, he couldn’t prevent it. To finance the entire operation, he had only the fifty remaining ounces of gold that Ranya had not found and stolen.  It was a narrow margin.

The war wagon pulled up the drive, and parked in front of the house. Now it was time to meet the San Diego
jefe
of the Mexican Mafia, and see if Chino and Salazar’s frequently mentioned relationship would result in assistance, or rejection.  Ramos stepped down from the big pickup truck feeling like an unacknowledged country cousin, meeting a rich uncle for the first time.  He squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and walked up the flagstone steps leading to the front of the imposing house.  The fragrance of honeysuckle and frangipani sweetened the calm twilight air.