Conquistadors

by Jeff Kirkham

  He stepped around the room tapping the walls and floor with the butt of a plunger. He’d done this before, but the room had been stick-framed, so the alternating solid and hollow knocks raised no suspicion in the boy’s mind.

  In the corner of the room behind the coat stand, Noah had noticed a weird thunk. He compressed the plunger dead center of the polished wood and pulled. A three-foot section of wall moved. The plunger hadn’t been strong enough by itself, but by adding the second plunger he was able to pull out a chunk of the wall. Once that section popped free, hinges allowed it to swing to the side. A section of the floor could be lifted in the same manner and hinged out of the way, giving access to a stairwell leading down. Noah had felt like the cleverest boy alive when he’d finally cracked his dad’s secret.

  But, somehow, the gangbangers had found this clever storeroom too. Noah concluded that Bill had left it open in his haste to go to war. Maybe he’d been putting a shine on his preps when the rice burners barreled down the county road.

  Even with the guns gone, it’d take Noah all night to pack the remaining supplies up, and there was no possible way it’d all fit in his Land Cruiser, not in twenty trips. The sheer magnitude of the job robbed Noah of his impulse to move on and get drinking. He’d have to work at least two hours to do right by Bill, and he couldn’t hardly do it wasted.

  What was it about the borderlands that murder was so commonplace? Soulless criminals drifted in these hills like wayward coyotes and killing them made about as much sense. Noah could pick them off like mongrels and they’d just come back in packs, hardly noticing their dead.

  Revenge killing wouldn’t fill the holes in his heart, but something, somewhere might. He didn’t think murder would do it, but following those dogs might lead to an answer. Without anyone to keep him in the borderlands, what would it hurt to go looking?

  Noah put a finer point on his plan. He could load up what he could, button up Bill’s prep bunker, and scout what the cartel was planning down in Old Mexico. If nothing else, the rice burners heading into Mexico made him curious.

  Why the hell were drug dealers going south?

  In any case, Noah could just as easily get shit-faced wandering around the Sonoran desert as he could at his kitchen table. Might as well get some questions answered while he did it.

  Chapter 13

  Tavo Castillo

  El Vaquero Griego Restaurant, Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico

  Tavo nursed a brown-bottled beer while he waited for Commander Prieto Ruíz to show up for his unexpected appointment. Beto’s recon element had identified this little restaurant as the place where Prieto Ruíz met his girlfriend for lunch most days. From there, the comandante and his lady friend would disappear for an hour or two. Tavo hadn’t bothered to find out where they went, though it wouldn’t be hard to guess.

  The commander’s woman sat across the rickety table from Tavo—beside the waxy, floral tablecloth ubiquitous throughout Mexico. Her tears cut rivulets down her heavy makeup. Tavo couldn’t avoid the cloying, chemical reek of her cosmetics. Occasionally, a whiff of barbecue from inside the restaurant covered up her stink, giving him a window to enjoy another taste of beer.

  Between her sobs and his sips of beer, Tavo pondered the Persian Empire. The romantic warriors of the world celebrated the Spartans. But Tavo celebrated Xerxes.

  The Persians, starting with King Cyrus, built one of the largest superpowers the world had ever seen, and they did so by surgically applying both courtesy and brutality. Xerxes was the last in a line of Persian masters. Like Xerxes, Tavo had come to ask the air force commander for “earth and water;” tokens of submission. It was always better to have unconditional subordination than to destroy a potential asset.

  Forced submission would be easy, if it came to that. Tavo’s man, Beto, lay on a rooftop a hundred meters away, ready to put a 7.62 x 51 bullet through the woman. Beto would then put one through the base commander. With that, one could say “problem solved,” if one were so inclined.

  But Tavo preferred the Persian way. There was a certain art to subordination. It required achieving a particular state of mind in one’s adversary.

  The comandante came trotting into the restaurant patio like a lovesick beagle. Waves of confusion passed over his face when he saw his mistress sitting with another man.

  Husband? Another lover? Police? Cartel?

  Tavo could track each expression crossing the man’s face. It was like watching a kaleidoscope lit by the human brain. In truth, Tavo didn’t respect men who cheated on their wives. It seemed unnecessarily vulnerable to him. Why spend so much energy, and incur so much risk, over something as impermanent as sex?

  Tavo waved the base commander over to the table with his beer bottle.

  “I’m a friend,” Tavo explained. “Enrique Reyes.” Tavo held out his hand and rose half-way from his chair. The man shook hands with a question mark lingering in his grip.

  “Please don’t be alarmed.” Tavo sat back down. “I have a sniper watching across the street.” The commander whipped around, searching into the sun. “He’s not going to shoot anyone. He’s here as an assurance,” Tavo explained as though talking about a legal formality.

  “What do you want from me?” the air force commander asked, trying to sound like a “serious man,” but not quite pulling it off.

  “In America, most air base commanders have no contact with their commanding officers right now.” Tavo had no idea if it were true. “Very shortly, neither will you. Who will you take orders from when that happens?” Tavo took a sip and could see in the man’s eyes that he had never thought about that possibility—never considered what he would do if command broke down.

  After a pause, he answered, “I would lock down my base until I received word from command.”

  “Okay, and what if you never received word from command?”

  “Then I would order all air assets returned to Mexico City.”

  “And what if Mexico City and all its military bases were burning when the planes and helicopters arrived?”

  The commander marshaled his courage. His back straightened and his voice hardened.

  “I’d land them in the courtyard of the presidential palace before I’d allow them into the hands of an enemy.”

  Tavo launched himself across the table and punched the woman in the face, rocking her head back in the chair. Her body slid onto the concrete below the table in a tangle of limbs. Her head hit the floor with a wet thunk.

  The commander looked up and glared at him. Tavo pretended to point a rifle at the man. “Bang, bang, comandante.” Tavo smiled. “Help her back into her seat and let’s not be enemies. America is falling and as you know—wherever America goes, so goes Mexico.”

  Tavo explained what would happen next as the man gathered his paramour up off the ground. He plotted each twitch and sag as the commander’s face flicked from anger to resistance to inevitable surrender.

  General Ignacio L. Pesqueira International Airport, Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico

  Before they reached the air base gate, Tavo considered reminding Commander Prieto Ruíz about the snipers. Tavo had positioned them at high points around the little base even before his lunch meeting. Given the conversation of the last half hour, and considering the truckload of Tavo’s trained operators pulling in behind them, he wasn’t worried about the commander. Upon seeing the operators—kitted up like American commandos—Tavo sensed that the commander’s reliance on Tavo’s good word, and the consequences of deviation, had gone up significantly.

  “Commander Prieto Ruíz, which of your staff is going to object to your new chain of command?”

  “Gonzales and probably Martín. The rest aren’t going to care where orders come from.” The commander rolled down his window and waved at the gate guard, motioning that he should let the small caravan pass. The guard stepped back and saluted.

  Tavo had taken Prieto Ruíz’s cell phone at the beginning of the car ride, after they dropped the woman off at her co
ncrete house a few blocks from the air base. A handmade sign hung on a trash can on the street that said “Manicura Cristy” or “Christy’s Nails.” Tavo marveled at the power of culture—it’d taken only a couple generations of runaway consumerism and Mexican parents were naming their children after American glamour models instead of traditional Catholic saints. Tavo might have to do something to reverse that trend.

  He handed the commander his cell phone. “Call Gonzales and Martín and have them meet us somewhere out of the way.”

  Tavo marveled at the wood crates stacked to the ceiling in the dim and musty warehouse. While they waited, he made a game figuring out what the stencil-painted letters and numbers meant. Like a monument to the stupidity of the military, the crates had all been marked differently and none of them were marked in a way that made their contents obvious.

  Why wouldn’t American quartermasters just mark their crates “Mortar Rounds for the M29 Mortar” instead of “RIAFB H.E.I. M97 M3 BRHS Tetryl?” Tavo had studied arms and combat for most of his adult life and still could only figure out what two-thirds of the crates contained. Regardless, ten minutes walking around the musty warehouse had been a revelation: he now knew that the air base contained a lot more weaponry than he had first thought.

  Tavo’s men shuffled into a defensive posture without being ordered to do so, probably sensing the danger in the transfer of power of a military installation. Noticing his fascination with the crates, Commander Prieto Ruíz broke the uncomfortable silence.

  “There are three other warehouses loaded with American junk like this one.”

  Tavo didn’t see any junk. He saw the mill that would grind up any resistance to a new empire in the region—an empire he would lead.

  “And what about the army base?” Tavo asked, waving at the crates.

  The base commander snorted. “Maybe ten times this much. Why should the Americans build storehouses in America when they can ship their garbage here and make us store it for them?”

  Natural light suddenly pierced the warehouse as Gonzales and Martín marched through the door together, slowing as they noticed the twenty armed commandos.

  “¿Comandante?” one of them asked, worry creeping into his tone.

  Tavo had prepared his operators for this moment, so no words were necessary. One of them took out his cell phone and began recording the interaction.

  “I’m your new Aviator Pilot General, Enrique Reyes” Tavo said, assuming the military title without offering a handshake. He wore tan 5.11 jeans and a black polo shirt, with his Glock holstered on his belt. Nothing about Tavo’s appearance, except maybe his physical fitness, bespoke a Mexican air force general.

  “No es cierto,” Martín blurted. “That’s not true.”

  Tavo drew his Glock, like pouring water from a pitcher, and shot Capitán Martín through the bridge of his nose. Even Tavo’s own operators startled at the sudden violence.

  Major Gonzales maintained remarkable calm considering the smoking Glock now centered on his face.

  The major spoke with an air of resignation. “I see, commander. The Americans are falling apart, so now this.” Gonzales motioned at the gunmen standing around the dim warehouse. “You are the men who killed the gangsters in the city and freed the archbishop two nights ago, am I correct?”

  Tavo nodded, tracking the man’s eyes through the tiny window of his Trijicon RMR pistol sight. “Yes. We saved him from the Negros gang.”

  The officer’s eyes defied the barrel of the handgun. “You’re not an officer. Anyone can see that. But I would be willing to fly under orders of the archbishop.” Gonzales reached slowly into his camouflage jacket and withdrew a silver chain and a small, silver cross.

  Tavo prided himself in taking good ideas from wherever they came. “What makes you think we need you to fly for us?”

  The pilot smoothed his hair. “Why else would you kill only one of us?”

  Tavo ignored the question. “You’ll fly for the archbishop, but you’d rather die than fly for me. You don’t even know who I am.”

  “I know enough. There’s only one type of man in Mexico who would shoot Capitán Martín like that…Narco criminal.”

  Tavo wasn’t clear how many pilots were on base, so he hesitated. He could always have him killed later. The lie cost him nothing.

  “You’ll be flying for the church, so you can relax.” He holstered his pistol.

  Tavo turned to the base commander, who stared down at his dead pilot, splayed on the ground, the room filling with the stench of his bowels. “Are we good, Comandante?”

  “Si, Señor Reyes,” the commander muttered, not taking his eyes off the dead man.

  “Comandante. Look at me,” Tavo ordered.

  The base commander looked up and met Tavo’s glare with eyes of surrender.

  “Are we good?” Tavo asked again.

  “We’re good,” the commander replied.

  Tavo held his gaze for a moment and then pointed to the soldier filming with his cell phone. Tavo hoped the message was obvious—he had film of the commander’s complicity. He would never be able to deny it. The base commander nodded and returned his attention to the dead man on the concrete.

  “Flex cuff this man and put him in the passenger seat of my car,” Tavo lifted his head in the direction of the pilot, Major Gonzales. “The rest of you stay with the comandante at all times. No personnel or aircraft are to leave this base without my orders. No communications in or out. Collect all cell phones and radios and cut the land lines. This facility goes dark for the next forty-eight hours.”

  Six commandos peeled off and herded the base commander out of the warehouse and toward the office. The rest took control of Gonzales and led him into the sunlight.

  The last man left the warehouse, leaving Tavo alone with the corpse. His thoughts returned to Xerxes of the Persian Empire. Using the specter of violence, he’d taken a Mexican military airbase with the loss of only one life. Was there any limit to what could be accomplished with dispassionate intellect?

  The young pilot had unwittingly offered him another chess piece in the game he’d set in motion—perhaps even a knight or a rook.

  Tavo had been in danger of forgetting: people were ethereal creatures and not even fear of the most dire violence would motivate them for long. As time and distance increased, terror would wear thin. Authority would dilute. The Persians knew this well, and they spread their priests and their religion with their dominion. Though they were idol worshippers of the blackest rank, the principle had withstood the test of time: fear of God would motivate men much further and deeper than fear of death.

  So much the better with the true god presiding.

  Chapter 14

  Noah Miller

  Hermosillo-Guaymas Highway, 50 miles north of Benjamin Hill, Sonora, Mexico

  Noah had followed the sign of the gangbangers and their low-slung Hotwheels, over thirty miles of dirt two-track through the night until they hit pavement and disappeared. Without credible sign to follow, he decided to commit the cardinal sin of tracking and “jump track” forward to Hermosillo. Given that pavement rarely yielded trackable sign and given that he’d already pounded half a bottle of Jack Daniels, Noah figured Bill would forgive him for being a little sloppy.

  The sun poked its accusing head over the horizon just when Noah reached pavement about twenty miles south of Nogales. The voice of Bill in his mind insisted that he backtrack to a bivouac position with good cover and concealment before getting a few hours of badly-needed shuteye. Rather than take his chances alongside the Mexican blacktop, Noah did as his old mentor’s voice instructed and he doubled back a few miles on the dirt road.

  Come to think of it, Noah would need to stop worrying what a dead man’s ghost might think. Superstitious hand-wringing was unbecoming of a cattleman.

  He found a good spot for his bivouac and fell asleep almost immediately. He woke with the sun beating down on the Land Cruiser and a stifling headache. With the midday heat and a st
omach full of whiskey, Noah felt like an oven-baked shit pie. He let out a rank belch, spilled out of the driver’s side door and went to find a place to relieve himself; Numbers One and Two and maybe a good, old fashioned puke—the Grand Trifecta of a night of hard drinking.

  When he returned to the Land Cruiser, he actually felt much better. He hadn’t forgotten that he’d lost his dad the day before, but it was hard to anguish with the sun shining like a holiday and his guts feeling like they’d been given a new lease on life.

  Autumn had finally begun its work on the pecan trees along the road between Nogales and Hermosillo. A slight breeze jangled the glowing leaves as if to herald the coming of a new year and a fresh start. His Cruiser pointed south into the Great Unknown, and something told him that the road before him held promise. Maybe not “win the lottery and buy a house next to Jay Leno” kind of promise, but it definitely felt possible that he wouldn’t drink himself into oblivion that night. Noah chalked that up as a win.

  He drove off the dirt track and down the highway to the bellowing of his Land Cruiser’s chunky tires on the blacktop. Noah rolled down his window and enjoyed the fecund breeze as it whispered through the pecan orchards.

  He’d heard news reports of American highways jammed with cars—urbanites fleeing the big cities. Here, in the two-hour stretch of road between Nogales and Hermosillo, the exact opposite was true. Everyone seemed to be holding tight in their square, cinderblock houses. He’d only passed a few dozen cars in as many miles. Nobody appeared to be escaping the city of Hermosillo, at least not to the north. Why would Americans run and Mexicans stay put?