Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista (8 page)

“I could’ve told you that.  Our instructions from headquarters have been the same ever since this mess started: New Mexico ‘land reform’ is not a federal issue.  We’ve already been directed by the DOJ to stay out of it, no matter how ugly it gets.  So it really doesn’t matter if Senator Kelly confirmed it to El Gobernador.”

“Alex, that’s all just background.  There’s more.  I haven’t gotten to the interesting part.  This is why Kelly called:  there’s going to be a conference next week up north, some kind of mega-meeting of big shots. Politicos and tycoons are coming from all over.  Heavy hitters only.  Senator Kelly is coming down, and he said Senator Montaine is coming over too!  Imagine those two cooperating on anything!  Deleon didn’t even know about the conference before this call, but it sounded like Kelly didn’t know that he didn’t know.  Kelly must have assumed that El Gobernador was already in the loop about the meeting.  Well, you know how cagey Deleon is—he played it like he knew all along—he didn’t miss a beat.  It’s going to take place up at Wayne Parker’s ranch next week.  You won’t believe who’s coming: Orozco…”

“Pascual Orozco’s not in charge of Mexico yet—there’s still a revolution going on.  Zorrero is still El Presidente.”

“Not for long,” replied Carvahal.  “Zorrero is going to go on a permanent vacation in Ireland any time now, that’s the rumor.  He already owns a castle there, or at least his brother does.  Zorrero is finished. Orozco will be the next El Supremo, one way or the other, and he’s coming to Parker’s ranch next week.”

“Then this meeting must have been cleared with the White House.”

“That’s what I think too.  It must have gotten the okay from on high; it had to have.  And you wouldn’t believe the guest list—thank God Senator Kelly is such a namedropper. Actually, he sounded pretty drunk. Besides the senators, Paul Warburg is coming, and maybe Nicholas Biddle and Norman Montague.  Imagine those billionaires, sitting down for dinner with a socialist like Pascual Orozco!  Something huge is going to happen up there, something important.”

“Like the Davos meetings, it sounds like.”  Garabanda was referring to the annual meeting of the so-called “World Economic Forum,” sometimes held in the Swiss town of that name.  

“No, not like Davos.  Not hundreds guests, only a dozen or so. And all in private, all in secret.  You know, Wayne Parker’s ranch has its own jet runway—I mean, the Vedado Ranch is almost a million acres!  I’m guessing it has something to do with Orozco taking over in Mexico, or maybe it’s about the Constitutional Convention in September.  Maybe it’s about the ‘North American Community.’  I’m just guessing—Senator Kelly wasn’t specific.  But whatever it’s about, it’s going to be major, judging by who’s coming.”

“Luis, what am I supposed to do with this kind of information? Send an Intel report to Washington, saying that a couple of U.S. senators are meeting secretly with foreign leaders and billionaires in New Mexico? Just because a well known drunk like Senator Kelly made a private phone call to the governor? I can’t send a report like that!  You could leak something like that to the media—that might work.  Put it out on the internet, the blogs might run with it.  But it’s political—it’s completely out of my area of responsibility, and believe me, it’s way, way above my pay grade.  I need something else, something tangible.  Maybe more information on the foreign fighters you said are coming over the border.

Something hard, with pictures, with names and some solid documentation. Then maybe they’ll pay attention at headquarters.  Maybe.”

Carvahal stage-whispered, “My God, you already know they’ve practically got a damned Mexican Ho Chi Minh trail running straight across the border and up into Colorado, and that’s not enough? What more does Washington need?”

“Calm down Luis, don’t make a scene...  I don’t know what it’ll take, I just don’t know.  I can’t even tell who’s really running the show back at headquarters. It seems like sellouts and UN carpetbaggers are in most of the key positions.  The way I see it, nobody’s left back there who gives a damn about a sovereign America any more. New Mexico…face it, we’re a backwater, a sideshow.  Washington has bigger problems to deal with than tinhorn radicals in ‘Nuevo Mexico.’ As long as they fly the Stars and Stripes over the capitol in Santa Fe, I don’t think Washington gives a damn what else happens here.  Not with LA burning and half of Detroit in a state of siege.”

“Then what’s the point, Alex?  What are we doing this for?”

“What are we doing this for?”  Garabanda repeated his question softly, taken aback.  “Luis, that’s a question I ask myself about a hundred times a day.”  He paused, and said quietly, “I suppose I’m just hanging on until retirement, is one answer.  Maybe the only one…”

“Aren’t you already over twenty years?  I guess you got screwed on that deal.”

“You got that right.  I was at nineteen when they changed the minimum to twenty-five years.  ‘Take it or leave it.’  Bastards!”

“Listen, you weren’t the only one who got screwed.  Remember, my entire pension evaporated into thin air when the Herald went belly-up. At least you feds will still get paid, even if they’re only going to pay you in blue bucks.”

“Luis, by the time I retire, they’ll probably be pink or red or purple bucks.  Worthless paper—just change the color, and whack off a zero.”

“Tell me about it!  You know what my IRAs are worth today?”

Garabanda muttered, “Yeah.  BOHICA.  Bend over, here it comes again.”

“So what keeps you going Alex, why are you still working for the feds? I know why I’m here, why I’m doing this.  My reporting days are finished, so if I’m anything any more, I’m an historian now.  Deleon’s confidant and biographer by day…and secret historian by night.  At this stage in my life, it’s enough for me to be where history is being made, and write it down.  And maybe—just maybe—do what I can to keep New Mexico in the United States.  But why do you keep at it? You’re not even from here, so what do you care?”

“Shit, now you’re getting all existential on me?  Here in the Toy Hut?”  Garabanda laughed quietly for a moment and gestured toward his son, playing on the floor.  “Well, I’ve got Brian there, that’s one reason to keep going.  And besides the paycheck, as long as I stay in, I can get into the federal stores and shop on the Air Force base.  And getting free gas for the bureau cars, that’s another nice bennie.  I can’t imagine how you civilians manage it, without getting into the federal stores and the military bases.”

“But is that enough?” replied Carvahal.  “Enough to keep you working for the whores in Washington?  Alex, that’s like being a stoker on the Titanic, and staying in the engine room shoveling coal while the ship goes down! For what?”

Garabanda pulled a shiny black “Magic 8-Ball” from the shelf in front of him, and was slowly turning it over.  “It’s what I do, Luis.  It’s all I’ve ever known.  Protect the country; try to warn headquarters…it’s all I can do. Finish the career, hope for a pension, and raise Brian as best I can when I’ve got custody.  It’s all I’ve got left.  Like your memoirs and your history of New Mexico.”

“Speaking of which,” said Carvahal, “There’s something else: Deleon is seriously paranoid about the Vice-Governor.  He’s as much as told me he thinks Magón is planning something, maybe some kind of a move against him.  Finding out about the Vedado Ranch conference back-channel from Senator Kelly—that really did it.  Now Deleon knows for sure that Magón is operating behind his back.  He thinks Wayne Parker set up the Vedado Ranch conference with Magón, making a private deal. Probably protecting Parker’s million acres from the Land Reform Act.”

“And Félix Magón is a total whack job,” added Garabanda.  “He’s another Castro wannabee, if you ask me.  He’s worse than Hugo Chavez.”

“You’ve got that right.  You should see his ‘Falcon Battalion.’  They make the regular
Milicianos
look like Girl Scouts.  Half of them are right out of the MS-13 and the Mexican Mafia—the worst scum from El Salvador to LA.  They’re not just another unit of the Milicia, they’re Magón’s enforcers.  They’ll do anything he says, anything at all.  Deleon has no control over them at all.  The Falcons only answer to Magón, and I don’t think there’s an American in the whole bunch.  And Washington doesn’t want to hear about it?”

The FBI agent stared intently at his informant, absorbing these latest rumors about the neo-communist Félix Magón.  He was allegedly born in New Mexico and was therefore a U.S. citizen, but he had spent most of his adult life in Cuba, Bolivia and Colombia, before returning to America and entering politics.  He replied, “Exactly right—Washington doesn’t want to hear about it. DC is still in the PC lockdown mode.  ‘See no evil, hear no evil.’  If Montana and Wyoming can pass ‘English only’ laws and start kicking out the illegals, then Nuevo Mexico can pass ‘
Español Solamente
’ and fire all the gringo cops.  Washington doesn’t see any difference at all. They don’t see ‘land reform’ as confiscating private property—they prefer to think of it as ‘helping the little guy.’  Like they say: ‘no justice, no peace,’ right? Meanwhile, they’ve got a bunch of hard core neo-Marxists and narco-gangsters taking over an America state, right under their noses!”

Carvahal added, “An American state, but for how long?  Listen Alex, I’m going with Deleon up to Tierra Andalucia Monday.  He’s going to inspect the Milicia training camps with Magón.  He has to show himself, make sure the
Milicianos
all know he’s really in charge, and not just the party figurehead.  I’ll take some pictures, and try to get you something you can send back to headquarters.  Something that might wake them up.”

“What the hell Luis, give it a shot. Watch your back though—if Magón’s gunning for Deleon, he’ll take out anybody near him.”

“I’ll be careful.  I’ll be back sometime Tuesday.  Let’s meet again, maybe midweek, okay? But not in another store.  How about the old Mount Calvary cemetery?”

“We’ve used it before,” replied Garabanda, dubious.

“So what? It’s huge, and I won’t have to pedal five miles to get there. I’ve got enough gas left to drive there, from home.  Say, Alex, about the gas…”

“Don’t worry about it.  I’ll bring the hose; I’ll fill you up.  Bring some extra Jerry cans in the trunk, and I’ll fill them up too.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it,” said Carvahal.  “The blue bucks…they don’t go far.  Thank God I own my family home free and clear…  But trying to find gasoline on the open market, it’s tough. Nobody wants to sell gas for blue bucks, not with the price freeze, and the money going down by the hour.  All the gasoline is winding up on the black market, and I can barely afford it. At least you feds can get gas, on the federal bases.”

“Thank God for that.  I know it’s tough—I can’t even imagine trying to live on the civilian economy.  So I’ll bring you some gasoline, that’s the best I can do for you, my friend.”

“No my friend, the best you do for me is listen to my stories.  You take the time to listen to an old reporter.”  Carvahal paused, looking briefly at Garabanda, and then turned back to the toy shelf.  “You know, I used to admire a lot about Agustín Deleon.  I still do, in some ways.  I used to be such a star-struck lefty, in my younger days…such a naïve idealist.  Oh, what a fool I was!”  Carvahal smiled weakly, and shrugged.  “You know, the Mountain Lion and I, we go way, way back together.  All the way to Tierra Andalucia, and the courthouse raid.  He’s actually mellowed in many ways. At least he’s not completely crazy!  But the people around him today, oh my God!  It’s like being trapped in a Marxist insane asylum, up in Santa Fe.  They think it’s Barcelona in 1935, or Havana in ‘58! You

wouldn’t believe it, the lunacy of them!  They’re trapped in a time warp.”

“They are?” asked Garabanda.  “Or we are? Maybe we are.”

“Us?  Trapped in a time warp?  My God, maybe we are.  Maybe we all are! But who’s going to stop this merry-go-round? And how the hell do we get off? Where does all this insanity end?”

“That, my friend, I haven’t figured out. Not yet.”  Supervisory Special Agent Garabanda turned over the Magic 8-Ball.  “Where does this insanity end?” he mused to himself.  

He read the secret message that floated up into view.

It said: “
Better Not Tell You Now
.”

***

The tin-roofed two-story farmhouse had a screened-in veranda,
which extended completely around the first floor.  The private RV campground spread along the bottomland almost a mile away to the west.  The sun was lost in gunmetal overcast across the creek, near setting.  The dozens of trucks and campers were dark blocks silhouetted across the fading horizon.

A ceiling fan circled quietly above the polished pine dinner table, which was located just outside the kitchen on the side of the house facing the campground.  Brass hurricane lamps suffused the screened-in porch with a soft golden glow.  The dishes had mostly been cleared away after a dinner of steak, salad, and fresh corn.  Four diners remained from the original group, including Caylen Barlow. His family had owned all of the land to the horizon for a century and a half. 

Barlow sat in his wheelchair and stared intently at Ranya, while sipping bourbon from a heavy glass.  He had a full head of snow-white hair, combed straight back, piercing blue eyes, and a face chapped red and deeply lined from a lifetime spent outside in all seasons.  It was his house, the house he had grown up in, moved away from, and returned to in his later years. He was seated in his wheelchair at the head of the table opposite Ranya.  Mark Fowler, the range master, sat on one side facing the screens and across the fields.  Another man sat across the table from him, he was a middle-aged black man with a shaven head, wearing a red Western shirt with blue piping. 

After devouring a plate-sized steak and all the trimmings, Ranya had told them her real name and her story, going all the way back to Virginia. To before her escape to Colombia, her return to America, and her betrayal. Before her baby had been born in prison, and was then stolen from her.

Before D-Camp.

Before Brad Fallon.