Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (95 page)

***

Alex Garabanda didn’t know where they were,
or how long they had to drive until they would arrive at their destination. He had heard the men mention a Twin Otter airplane, and flying south instead of east.  No matter where they were going, it was out of his ability to control.  He was unarmed, his hands were tightly bound with flex cuffs, and he knew it was impossible to break them.  Ranya was in the same position beside him, staring into the darkness out of the right side of the big SUV.  They were both in the same utterly hopeless situation.

He was in the custody of Comandante Basilio Ramos of the Falcon Battalion and two of his men.  Men so ruthlessly efficient that they had boarded the regional director of homeland security’s yacht, and swatted aside his protectors like flies.  They had even dared to kidnap Director Bullard himself, driving him right off of federal property in his own vehicle.  If they could do all of that, there was absolutely no chance of overcoming them, not with his hands securely tied behind his back with thick plastic cuffs.  His hands were bound so tightly that he was losing feeling in his fingers.  But what did this matter, against the plans Ramos had in store for them?

“Flying south” meant flying deep into Mexico, beyond any hope of American rescue, even if his superiors knew where he was—which they didn’t.  It was hopeless. Old photos of DEA agent Kiki Camarena’s body flashed through his memory.  Camarena had been kidnapped right off of the street in Guadalajara in 1985 by corrupt Mexican police, acting on the orders of high-level
narcotrafficantes
. He had been brutally tortured for days by both government officials and narcos, who were working side by side to learn what the DEA knew about their high-level collusion in the drug trade.

Kiki Camarena’s infamous fate was used as a cautionary tale in federal law enforcement training: if you go south of the border you’re on your own, and you can expect only treachery and betrayal from every side. In Mexico, today as in 1985, it was assumed that every single policeman, military officer and government official was corrupt and working for the
narcos
. The only honest cops in Mexico were the dead ones, who refused the silver, and took the lead.  Once they landed in Mexico, there could be no hope for rescue or even mercy from any quarter. 

***

Bob Bullard couldn’t understand
what these spic terrorists were saying, but he had very little confidence that they would keep their end of the bargain and let him go.  What happened to the other prisoners in the back of his SUV didn’t concern him in the least, since they had no apparent value to him as bargaining chips.

If he couldn’t depend on his captors to release him, could he depend on local police, the Federal Protective Service or the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team to save him, without him being killed in the process? They were already outside of downtown, across I-5, beyond the relative safety of the coastal zone. They were heading up the 163 to Montgomery Field.  That was where they would either release him, or kill him.

He knew there was always the option of pushing the panic button, actually a combination of two buttons to push at the same time on the instrument panel.  If he held down the stereo’s CD ejector and FM/AM buttons at the same time for five seconds, coded radio alarms would be sent, and an emergency response would be triggered.

But under the present circumstances, with the Mexican gangsters sitting behind him and beside him, could he do it, push the two buttons down for five seconds? These men were not fools.  They had boarded the Eldorado dressed in Homeland Security uniforms, and had immediately killed Captain Escoria and the new female IRS agent.  Now there was a pistol and two submachine guns aimed at him, and the tip of a long carving knife pricking him in the small of his back.  Could he do it?  Could he push the panic buttons without them noticing?  Even if he did, how long would it take to mount a hostage rescue?  He’d be dead hours before they could save him.

***

For Ranya, to come so far and to fail
was the most agonizing torture of all.  Brian was only inches away behind her.  She could hear him whimpering in the green bag where he’d been zipped shut on the yacht.  He didn’t even know her; he wouldn’t recognize the sound of her voice, so she couldn’t even offer him meaningful comfort.  What would become of poor little Brian, lost in the world like a wood chip in a tempest at sea?  Perhaps it would be hoping too much that he would be returned to Karin Bergen, the woman that he at least knew as his mother.

Basilio had horrible, disgusting, cruel plans for her.  That was to be expected, after the way she had left him in his villa—drugged with Libidinol, screwing the gringo professor to death.  If what he said was true, if he wasn’t just playing with her mind, she was going to be delivered to a Mexican whorehouse, addicted to heroin and crystal meth, and forced to work as a prostitute.  She would rather die fighting than be turned over to that fate.  But how could she fight, with her hands tightly bound behind her back?

Starting on the day that she had landed in the United States after returning from Colombia, she had been handcuffed too many times to count. With some steel cuffs, there was a chance, given enough time and privacy, to pass her hands beneath her bottom and work them around to the front.  Bound more closely wrist to wrist with a nylon flex cuff, there was no chance.  Her only “hope” might be to rush one of her captors, to try to force him to use his gun in self-defense.  

Some hope—suicide by a gangster’s bullet.

And that would still leave Brian all alone, terrified inside of the green canvas bag, left to whatever cruel fate Basilio Ramos chose for him.

***

His hands were going numb. 
The zip tie had been yanked too aggressively when they had first been applied, while he was lying prone on the asphalt.  Alex Garabanda had felt them tingle, then burn, and now they were going cold, losing sensation.  The back of his right wrist and arm was jammed against his spine; the back of his left wrist was pressed tightly to the pulse spots of his right.  He knew that the nylon flex cuff, like a jumbo-sized electrical cable tie, was rated at over 500 pounds breaking strength. It tightened with tiny internal ratchet teeth, and it would never be looser. Once pulled down like a plastic noose, the flexible handcuffs could only get tighter.  That was reality. 

He had worn flex cuffs in training many years ago, but never this tightly, and never for this long.  A new sensation enveloped the fingers of his left hand, another type of pressure, almost like a squeezing or kneading. He had expected the numb feeling to gradually leave his fingers, and this new feeling came as a surprise.  

But then the new sensation turned to a tugging, a timed rhythmic pulling, and for a few seconds he was confused, and he looked at Ranya, but she had not moved, she was still staring out of the right side window at the darkness.  If not her, then…what?

And then he knew.  In his mind, the tugging and pulling suddenly became a clear image of what it was: a small hand was pulling his own, and he tried to squeeze back, to wiggle his fingers at least.  He knew that somehow, Brian’s little hand was beyond the crack of the rear seat where the seatbelts passed through.  Clever Brian knew about this split, he had tracked small toys from the back seat to the rear cargo area of Karin’s 4Runner.  Now he was reaching through, looking for comfort from his father, and giving comfort, and Alex squeezed back, pulsing his grip as they had done so many times when holding hands.  It wasn’t much, but it was something, a silent, secret, shared hello.  Brian must have managed to unzip his bag from inside. 

Alex hunched down and pushed his hands far into the space between the seats, taking both of Brian’s small hands in his two crisscrossed hands…and he felt something different, something other than Brian’s tiny fingers and thumbs.  Something else, being pressed into the palm of his left hand.

***

Brian knew how things came off key chains. 
They went round and round the silver circles. The problem was, he couldn’t work the squeeze light, and take anything off from the silver ring, because it took both thumbs and both pointer fingers to make the blue light stay on.  After a minute of trying he gave up, and decided to just open the little knife while it was still on the key chain, and that’s what he did.  The blade had very sharp point, and so he held it carefully by its handle while pushing it through the canvas bag, on the side where he thought he had heard his Daddy’s voice.  The knife went through, making a little hole, but that wasn’t enough.  He remembered that the little blade had bumps on it like a saw, so he decided that maybe sawing was the best way to cut a hole in the bag.  Soon he found the best way to push and pull, and he was able to slide his entire arm through the cut that he had made.

With one hand, he felt outside of the bag until he touched the back of the seat, and he felt down it until he could touch the crack along the bottom of the seat, the place where seatbelts went, the place where toys could get lost and fall through.  He pushed and pushed his hand, until it went through the seats, and he felt around and found only nothing, and moved his hand from side to side—and his hand bumped right into grown up fingers!  In a little while, the big fingers were squeezing right back, and he knew for sure it was his Daddy! Next, it was time to give him the key chain.

Once the knife was open, Brian couldn’t close it.  It opened with a snap, and it stayed that way.  It was not easy pushing his hand through the crack in the seat, not with a bunch of keys and a knife, and it took him a long time but he did it, he pressed the key chain into his Daddy’s hand! Along the way, something sharp stung him, but he knew he was doing an important job and he didn’t stop, and he didn’t cry.  When he finally had both hands back inside of the bag, his right pointer finger burned, and when he put his finger in his mouth in the black darkness, he tasted blood. He was bleeding, and it hurt, but he didn’t cry out.

***

The flex cuffs bound his wrists in an X
and kept the fingers of his two hands apart, so it was difficult to move anything between them.  He could feel a bundle of keys, could see the tiny knife in his mind.  The black plastic handle was two inches long, shorter than a car key.  The open surgical stainless steel blade was a little shorter, and it was serrated except for the last half inch near the point.  The knife had been thrown in as a free gift on a law enforcement catalog order, and it had cut nothing more important than the occasional string or package wrapping.  He maneuvered its handle into his right fingers, which were angled down to the left.

His left wrist was on the outside of his right, against the seat behind him.  The inside of his left wrist, the pulse point, was the only place where he could conceivably slide the blade between his skin and the tough nylon flex cuff.  If he misjudged the angles he could easily slit his veins, but it was not a time to be squeamish.  The alternative was to share the fate of Kiki Camarena or Luis Carvahal.  He didn’t know how far it was to the airport that they were traveling to, but in case they were close, he couldn’t take the time to be careful.  He could tell nothing about his surroundings, the highway was isolated in a channel between high graffiti-covered concrete walls, two lanes in each direction, with a Jersey barrier down the center.

With his hands already numb, Alex couldn’t feel exactly where the blade was sliding sideways, but he could feel the resistance beneath the flex cuff, and he twisted the handle to turn the serrations outward, and only with difficulty he began to clumsily saw the blade back and forth in weak little half-inch strokes.  He could feel slippery wetness on his fingers but he only pushed harder and sawed faster.  The handle became slick, the nylon bumping against the blade’s serrations—until it popped apart without warning.  Painful heat surged into his hands, as a wave of relief flooded his entire being.

The plastic cuffs were off, and his hands were free! He rubbed his wrists and flexed his fingers and hands.  The SUV passed through an exit between the walls that enclosed the highway, that had enclosed most of the highways he had seen in San Diego.  The exits were the only breaks in the barriers for long stretches.  There were countless miles of these twenty-foot cement highway barriers, and a crazy thought came into his head at that moment—that if only those miles and miles of twenty foot high cement walls had been built along the Mexican border decades ago, we might have stopped the invasion, and we might have saved our country!

He kept his hands behind his back, and moved sideways a few inches to touch Ranya with his knee, and then his hip.  When their shoulders were touching, he slipped his right hand behind her back over to her tightly bound hands and he squeezed them tightly, his hand wet and slippery, and she turned to him as if she had been given an electric shock, her eyes asking: How?

He told her with his eyes to be ready, and with the key chain and knife now in his right hand he found her flex cuff, and probing with his index finger, he guided the blade flat-wise beneath the nylon.  There was no perfect way, no protected way, the only way was to push it through, between skin and cuff, jam it through, and turn its sharp serrated edge outward.  With his free hand, he was able to push and pull with longer oneinch sawing motions, while his captors were focused on their route, and on their directions.

The big SUV turned onto a straight road through some kind of an industrial park, where only a few streetlights were still working. Ramos and his men were on high alert now, their machine pistols on their laps, obviously fearing ambush and getting ready to counter attack, ignoring their prisoners in the back seat.  The van slowed and made a left and approached a high security gate.  Their kidnappers’ weapons were openly displayed for the uniformed security guards to see, this appeared to be an accepted level of precaution in a luxury SUV after dark.  The private guard only glanced at the stickers on Bullard’s windshield and at the DHS uniforms on Ramos and his other stooge, and the ten foot high chain link gate rolled open with a rumble and whine.  After few turns beyond the gate, they were driving between parallel rows of identical airplane hangars.