The Last Pilgrims (19 page)

“Then let’s go…”

The trip down to the basement of what was
once the old Camino Real hotel was rather uneventful, as most of
the staff had no idea that anything out of the ordinary was going
on. They were stopped twice by curious guards, but when English
acted irritated and obsessed with the missing buttons on his coat,
the guards dismissed them with little fuss.

Medieval castles were built mainly for
defense purposes, but that changed around the 14
^th
and
15
^th
centuries, when comfort became a priority.

The Chimenea Castle was designed along the
latter lines, and since the main tower had been constructed out of
a hotel, the Chimenea had hundreds of rooms that had been combined
and converted into spacious and decadent suites for important
visitors and guests.

The basement of the old hotel was not only
home to the laundry facilities, but it had, at one time, been a
part of the civil defense and emergency management system for
downtown El Paso. A large portion of the basement was still
unrenovated, and it had devolved into a large open storage area
with unused offices off the main great room.

Upon reaching the basement, Pano stopped in
the laundry area and stole some clothing from lockers that lined
the wall; then they ducked into the abandoned civil defense shelter
and Pano led English to one of the offices in the far southeast
corner of the basement. Closing the door behind them, Pano tossed
him some of the stolen clothes.

“Here, put these on. I’m sorry if they don’t
fit. I had to grab what was there.”

“These aren’t even Aztlani peasant clothes!
They’re worse! This shirt looks as if it was chewed by a dog,” he
said. This time he wasn’t faking his irritation.

“If we were escaping into Aztlan, you’d want
Aztlani peasant clothes, but we’re not … we’re going to
Mexico.”

“What?” English stopped dressing with one
leg partially into the hideous pants that seemed to have been
loosely woven from cast-off hemp. “This city is in Aztlan, Pano. El
Paso is Aztlan. Aztlan is all around us.”

“Just keep dressing, boss; you’ll understand
when we’re underway.”

“If this is some attempt to turn me over to
the Duke dressed like a mentally disturbed coffee picker from the
mountains of South America so that I won’t have the honor of being
executed in my uniform, I shall be quite put out with you,
Pano.”

Pano started laughing. “No, but only because
I hadn’t thought of that; just please finish so we can go!”

When he pulled on the magnificently
offensive green overshirt, Pano abandoned all attempts to control
himself. He pointed and almost doubled over with laughter. English
looked down at himself, and then just gave a low bow before
squinting in an implied threat.

Pano started moving several pieces of rotted
wood, an old Plexiglas display stand, and some clothing racks,
uncovering a large shelving unit base that had once served as a
makeshift filing cabinet. He understood from Pano’s grunting that
his assistant wanted him to help move the cabinet, so he grabbed
the free end and shoved it away from the wall. Under the cabinet
was an ancient carpet remnant, covering ten treated 2” x 10”
boards, all laid flat as if they had been stored there some time
during construction decades ago. As they began to move the boards,
the entrance to the tunnel started to appear.

English looked down into the tunnel, which
was as dark as the darkest night of the soul that could possibly be
imagined; then he looked back up at Pano. “A tunnel?”

“Yes, a tunnel.”

“To where?”

“I told you, to Mexico.”

“How long is this tunnel?”

“Ten miles. Straight south. It’s an old drug
tunnel.”

“Are you telling me that they used to mule
drugs into the emergency law-enforcement headquarters of one of the
largest cities in America?”

“Who did you think was selling the
drugs?”

English shook his head. “I thought that you
were going to get me out of here. I assumed that we were going to
ride leisurely up to New Rome on horseback and have margaritas at
some inn up in the mountains. You want me to go farther south? In
the summer? I’ll melt.”

“You can’t go back to New Rome, English.
Ever. You are a fugitive and a traitor to your King… and you won’t
melt because I threw away your tunic.”

He looked back down into the tunnel, trying
to discern if it did, in fact, have a bottom. There was an old,
rickety, wooden ladder that led down and disappeared into the
darkness.

“Will there be margaritas in Mexico?”

“Well, I know a place in Monterrey that has
the best Mezcal you’ve ever had, and the worm at the bottom of the
bottle is delicious.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Yes. If you were to get down to the
worm—which you wouldn’t—you would find that it is actually
tasteless. It tastes just like Mezcal.”

“I think I’d rather be beheaded.”

“That is the other option.”

English sighed again then looked back the
way they had come. “They better have margaritas.” he said as he
gingerly climbed down into the darkness.

“Again!” Piggy yelled as David watched the
last knife bounce harmlessly off the target. “You have to feel and
watch the rotation in order to make minute adjustments according to
the distance. The knife is a tool—an inanimate object, sure, but
one with a will. It
wants
to fly right, straight and true.
That is what it was made to do. A rock dropped from a height wants
to fall, right? A thrown knife
wants
to stick into stuff!”
Piggy smiled at David and pointed at him. “Just let the knife do
what the knife wants to do. Now, try
again
!”

David wiped his brow with his sleeve and
dismounted in order to retrieve the knives. Before today, he’d
never thrown a knife at all, much less from the back of a
horse.

The day was hot and brutally still and,
given that the militia lived and breathed training, there were few
breaks. Hydration was always necessary, but a rest break was all
but non-existent. The men didn’t see training as some chronological
interference into their lives. Training
was
their life; and
to them was as enjoyable as anything else they might have been
doing. If you were too tired, you could sit down and catch your
breath. If you were hungry, you would eat. The rest of the time,
the militiaman trained.

David’s short time in the militia had been
quite educational. The Ghost militia was a strange concoction of
professional army, guerilla unit, desert cavalry, and Special
Forces recon fighting group.

Phillip had modeled the group loosely on the
fighting concepts of the Moorish and Berber desert cavalries of the
late medieval period in Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, combined
with the tactics and lifestyle of many of the mounted insurgency
groups he had fought in Asia in the early 21
^st
century.

The group’s motto, if David could discern
one from what he was constantly being told, was “First train, then
train. When you are done training, you train; and when you rest,
you train. When you are not training, you are training your mind.
Only when you die, do you cease to train.”

The militia rarely wore armor, because it
was heavy, hot, and cumbersome; and, given the way they fought, it
was usually more trouble than it was worth. The men wore long, but
loose fitting sleeves, usually weaved of cotton, which protected
them from the sun and allowed for perspiration and evaporation, but
were also heavy enough to give them light protection from spent
arrows or projectiles. When riding or fighting, they usually wore
long leather coats that also served as some protection from
glancing blows, as well as from cactus and mesquite thorns.

Although the Ghost militia did have the
equipment, ability, and skills to fight with guns, they preferred
using arrows, javelins, knives, and swords. Every Ghost militiaman
was an expert in
all
edged weapons. This had been drilled
into David since the day he joined. In order to survive, he needed
to know how to ride and how to fight. They lived with their horses,
and they fought primarily with edged weapons. Hence, drilling and
training in these two disciplines never ceased. As David was
already considered to be even beyond an expert with a bow and
arrow, his training focused on areas wherein he was deficient.

David wiped his forehead with the ample
sleeve of his tan cotton blouse and remounted his horse. He looked
at Piggy, who was tossing his razor sharp knife up and then
catching it and spinning it on his hand, mindless of any
danger.

“Nobody else throws knives from horseback,
Piggy, so why are we doing this?”

“Because you are training with Piggy, David
Wall! If you were training with someone else, you wouldn’t be
throwing knives from horseback. It’s really quite simple.”

“I mean, shouldn’t I learn to throw knives
from standing on the ground first?”

“Some might believe that. I don’t. I believe
that you should train for the way you would fight. When you learned
to ride, did you sit on a saddle on the ground first, or did you
climb up on a horse? Piggy’s way is to
do
.”

“I’m not sure that those things are the
same,” David said, frowning.

Piggy waved off David’s objection. “Nothing
is the same with anything it is not. Besides, it doesn’t matter if
they are the same. This is Piggy’s Way!” Piggy laughed and spread
his arms wide. “If I can train you to throw knives effectively from
horseback—and there is no telling if I can, as I’ve failed with all
these monkeys I live with—but if I can train
you
to do it,
then you will have a skill that will help you and even feed you for
the rest of your life. If I fail—which I am likely to do—then you
can learn to throw a knife from the ground like any one of the
monkeys.”

“Ok, Piggy.”

“Again!”

The training, both mental and physical, had
been brutal and consistent. In a very short time, David had learned
to sleep on his horse without falling off; how to stay up all night
on watch; how to move almost soundlessly through just about any
environment; and, most importantly, he had learned how to
blend
in
. To blend in, you first had to move without being seen; and,
if seen, you must move without being noticed; if noticed, you had
to move without raising suspicion; however, if you raised
suspicion, you had to move without any risk of being caught.

Phillip’s teaching was simple in its
philosophy, and difficult in its practical application. He wanted
an army that was as natural to the environment as the mesquite tree
or the diamondback rattlesnake. It needed to be able to stand
perfectly still and be unnoticed; it needed to be able to move
quickly and definitively without being tracked or monitored; and it
needed to be able to strike anywhere, in any direction, at any
time, from a position of strength and surprise.

Phillip taught David that the primary
battlefield was that of the mind; thus, his military needed to be
able to overwhelm the minds of the enemy. He firmly believed that,
if you triumph in the mind, you would almost certainly triumph in
battle.

Like Stonewall Jackson’s brigade, Phillip
wanted to be able to break every maxim of war. He wanted to be able
to divide his forces and simultaneously attack two or more enemies,
dozens of miles apart, each with superior numbers. He wanted to be
able to attack one enemy in the evening and then move rapidly
80-100 miles over rough terrain overnight to attack another. In
this way, his forces would seem to be 10 times larger than they
were in reality. By traveling light, living off the land, and
blending seamlessly into the environment, the Ghost militia would
be everywhere and nowhere. He did not believe in ‘campaigns’ as
they were traditionally fought. He believed in attrition—slowly and
methodically destroying the enemy’s will to fight, and thus their
effectiveness.

Phillip always told David that the militia’s
greatest asset was Texas itself. He would say, “The land and the
people of Texas are, by their nature, ungovernable, except by God.”
They had, for well over 150 years, allowed themselves to be ruled
over by their lust, greed and covetousness; however, that period
was an anomaly never to be repeated so long as he lived.

David threw the knife at the target again,
this time forcing himself to keep his elbow high, his arm path
short and under control. He had a mental image of the rotations as
the knife left his hand, and, as it stuck in the board, he felt an
elation run through him that he had never felt before.

“Excellent!” Piggy exclaimed. “Now, the
trick is to do that repeatedly, so that you develop muscle memory
and
thought memory. It needs to be as natural as brushing
your teeth.”

David smiled broadly, “When do I learn to
hit a moving target?”

“New Rome wasn’t built in a day, Brother
David. Training is our credo and our life. Now… do it again!”

Around midday, the men gathered in small
groups spread around the perimeter that Phillip had outlined for
them. Their meal was a large hunk of pemmican—ground up and
powdered meat solidified into chunks with rendered fat and berry
powder. It was to be eaten with hard, dried, flat biscuits that
would be dipped in water to make them soft. At each mealtime, one
small group out of the entire unit would elect a single member in
rotation whose job it was to try to move around the perimeter
without being seen by the other groups. It almost never happened,
but it was a constant reminder to stay focused and alert even when
relaxing. Still, this exercise was never attempted at night
because, inevitably, the scout would have been killed by the
hyper-alert militia watches. On occasion, different members of the
militia would be invited to have a night off, when they were
expected to dine at his father’s table.