Conquistadors

by Jeff Kirkham

  Tavo’s lieutenants considered the maps he spread out on the hood of his Humvee and looked at one another with eyebrows raised.

  “We needed that refinery.” He pointed to the mile-thick column of smoke, twisting skyward like a dancer on a pole. “If we are forced to run this op on Mexican fuel, our supply chain will spread across hundreds of miles. This area will be crawling with starving lunatics in a week. A long supply chain will require us to leave troops along the way, and it’ll whittle down the tip of our spear. The Tucson refinery would’ve allowed us to range out from here instead of from Hermosillo. Now we have a problem.”

  “How far are we going?” Beto asked.

  “We need to reach Salt Lake City. It’s a nexus for fuel out of Wyoming and Northern Utah.” Tavo traced the lines of several pipelines that terminated in Salt Lake City, Utah. “As long as the psychos don’t set fire to the refineries, we can push into Idaho and even eastern Washington. We’ll capture trillions of dollars of American infrastructure and the farm belt of the west.”

  Tavo could tell this was a lot of information, probably coming at them too fast.

  “Look at it this way,” he tried to simplify. “If we bring guns, we bring order. If we bring order, we are kings. Without us, these people will tear each other apart like starving dogs. Why not enforce order, bring back the church and set ourselves up like emperors all at the same time? Everyone wins.”

  “Okay, Boss.” Alejandro shook off the grandiosity of Tavo’s vision. “Just tell us what you need us to do. We’re soldiers. We know how to take ground. You’re saying that we need to take a lot of ground, right?”

  “Yes. I think this corridor north will be uncontested, minus a couple small, military holdouts and a couple pockets of citizen militia. But we need forward operating bases to protect our fuel supply. Tucson refinery looks like a total loss, so my contingency plan is this town.” Tavo poked a finger at the map in the middle of New Mexico.

  “Alejandro, take Bravo Company and hightail it directly to this town, Artesia. Don’t stop. Don’t engage opposition. There’s a big refinery, and with that fuel we can leapfrog straight to Salt Lake City.”

  “Are you sure, Jefe?” Alejandro gave Tavo a sideways look. “We’re in the United States, now. This ain’t Mexico. There are weapons here that can waste this little army in one shot.” Alejandro held up a finger. “And that’s not counting the millions of guns owned by American rednecks. Are you sure we shouldn’t sit tight until we have a better idea, Ese?”

  Tavo hated it when his lieutenants talked like street people. “No, ese. I don’t think we should sit tight. There are only two logical possibilities: if they launch a cruise missile, we have nothing to worry about because we’ll be dead before we know it. If they can’t launch their million dollar bullets because they don’t know how to leave the house in the morning when the coffee maker doesn’t work, then we’re going to roll through here before they know what happened—unless we wring our hands until the gas gets burned up by psychos. In that case, we won’t be going anywhere. You know as well as I do, the first guy to throw a punch in a street fight usually wins. That black sky up ahead; yesterday, that was once our ticket to more money and power than you ever imagined and it’s going up in smoke. We will have one, maybe two more chances to secure the fuel we need. Can I trust you to get this done, Alejandro?”

  “Yeah. I’ll get it done. But you guys be careful. Any time I start thinking there’s only a couple ways something can go down, some puta madre comes up with a third option that hadn’t occurred to me.”

  Tavo had always allowed, even encouraged, debate between him and his three lieutenants. He reminded himself that Alejandro wasn’t being belligerent. He just hadn’t figured out the new reality. They were at war, and in war, debating earned a subordinate a bullet in the face. Tavo couldn’t think of a good way to threaten a man that he was about to send off on a mission, so he took another tack.

  “Obviously, we’re doing something right or we wouldn’t have made it this far. We have been at the right place at the right time, every step of the way. So far it certainly appears like we’re on the path…of God.”

  Alejandro huffed despite Tavo’s hard eyes boring into him. “We’re drug runners, carnal. I make it a personal policy not to count on God for anything.”

  Tavo held up his hand instead of putting it on his Glock, which he desperately wanted to do. “And yet here we are. In America. Unopposed. We have the northern Mexican army backing our play. If I’d told you two weeks ago that we’d be standing here today, you would’ve never believed me. The people of Hermosillo have food and water on its way instead of being raped by the Zetas. Is it so hard to believe that God is using us to save lives?”

  Alejandro shook his head, then nodded. “Yes. It’s hard to believe.”

  Tavo glanced from Alejandro to Saúl then to Beto. Saúl seemed ready to roll with the group’s consensus. Beto’s face had something else going on—an inner eagerness that could be either battle lust or faith. In either case, he was good-to-go. Alejandro saw it too.

  “You are some crazy pendejos.” Alejandro smiled and nodded his surrender. “Okay. I guess we conquer America. Let me know if Saint Michael shows up in front of you guys with a flaming sword or some shit like that. I may need a little faith-booster when shit gets real over here.” He said the last word like a gangbanger. Over he-ya.

  Tavo smiled and put his hands on his hips, one resting lightly on his pistol. Nobody seemed to notice.

  “We’ve got the abbot with us, and the blessing of the archbishop of Hermosillo. Plus, we have twenty belt-fed machine guns and fifty rocket-propelled grenades. If that isn’t Saint Michael with a flaming sword, it’s pretty damn close.”

  “Maybe so, hermano. Maybe so.” Alejandro bro-hugged each of the men, then left to lead his unit east toward New Mexico.

  Chapter 20

  Noah Miller

  US Highway 19, near Drexel Heights, Tucson, Arizona

  “And, yes, the Man, He is a consuming fire

  the flames burn away the chaff.

  Yes our Man, He is a consuming fire

  He bears the wind, and grips the staff,

  and heats this heart of stone.”

  The Crusader

  As soon as the cartel pushed through the border crossing station at Nogales, Noah lit out for Tucson. He’d encountered an encampment of law enforcement officers milling around the Indian casino at Blue Skies. He convinced them that the cartels were indeed invading—LEOs were forever skeptical. But after telling them about the human sacrifice he’d found in the desert, the majority of the cops pulled up stakes and headed for Tucson. They’d agreed that it’d be the best place to make their stand, especially if they could enlist air support from the National Guard airbase.

  When he reached the airbase in Tucson, he’d been sorely disappointed. The place had been locked down as though the U.S. government was saving it for a rainy day. Noah drove twice around the entire facility without seeing a living soul inside the perimeter fence. He prayed the security force was monitoring the video feeds, but if they were, nobody came out to investigate, even when he rammed his Land Cruiser into the north gate. The gate held and Noah failed to attract attention. After almost an hour of trying to raise the alarm at the airfield, he gave up.

  After that failed attempt, he raced up and down residential streets, honking his horn. Not a single person came out of their house, if they were even there.

  While driving a grid pattern, looking for volunteers, Noah heard a spat of gunfire. He raced to the sound to find three cops firing their guns into the asphalt. They holstered as he approached.

  One of the cops leaned in his window as he rolled to a stop. Noah recognized him from the Blue Skies casino. “We figured knocking on doors would get us shot. Shooting into the dirt brings out the right kind of survivor.” Two minutes later, four armed men and a woman crept out of their homes. The cops waved them over with a white flag.

  “We�
��ve probably sent a hundred men to Drexel Heights so far,” the cop explained.

  He let Noah know that ten groups of cops were working the streets, rallying the residents of Tucson and sending them to the meet up. Noah figured he couldn’t do any better so he flipped a U-turn and headed toward Drexel Heights to see if he could help organize the ambush.

  He found hundreds of armed men, mulling around the massive parking lot that served the Santa Cruz Outlet Stores. Other than the fact that they were all in the same place, Noah couldn’t discern any organization whatsoever. The tableau raised visions of the American Revolution. He didn’t know where those images originated—movies, probably. He could picture this same scene playing out two-hundred and fifty years before; men running around with hunting rifles, rushing to prepare themselves for the British Army as it cut a swath across the colonies. It made him think about their unlikely victory, and the creation of a nation where “bearing arms” would forever be a part of the national culture.

  Those original American revolutionaries had envisioned fighting off kings and tyrants with their guns. What would they think if they saw this—an army of foreign drug dealers, paid for by America’s hunger for narcotics? Would they even find this nation worthy of saving?

  Whatever they might think, Noah knew his calling. The biggest, brightest thing in the parking lot was a fire truck, so he angled the Cruiser toward it.

  “Is your chief here?” he asked the oldest-looking man. Everyone was in street clothes, so Noah didn’t know for sure they were even firemen.

  The man hesitated. “I’m Chief Blanchard.” He reached out his hand and the two men shook.

  Noah took a deep breath. Just from the man’s tentative body language, he surmised the chief had arrived at his position as chief more from being a “team player” than being a man of action. Noah reasoned, these days, a city fire chief probably had to be a political operator over a two-fisted man of action.

  “The cartel army is coming. They’ll be here in under an hour. You need to organize these men,” Noah said, getting right to the point.

  The chief shielded his eyes from the sun and sized up a knot of men fifty yards away. “The guys from the PD are never going to follow a fire chief.”

  Noah shook his head. “I don’t give a shit who leads, but someone needs to take charge, and it needs to happen fast. Fire up your sirens and get everyone over here. Make a plan, any plan—just so long as when those narco bastards drive past that hill, they get pasted.”

  “I know what needs to happen. I’m just not sure how to coordinate it without anyone from city government to set up lines of authority.” Chief Blanchard held out his hands.

  “Fuck those city guys. They’re not here. You are. Make some noise and get these men all pointed in the same direction. I’ve got to go get eyes on the cartel convoy. Make it happen, Chief. Light up your siren. You’ll know what to do from there.”

  Noah jumped in his vehicle and sped away south down the highway. As soon as he was on the road with his tires howling, his worry ramped into high gear. The entire southbound shoulder of the 19 was filled with Tucson refugees stumbling south, probably toward the water treatment plant out in the desert. These were the least-prepared of the Tucsonites, and they were also, probably, the easiest to lead. The men in the parking lot he’d just left were better prepared for hard times, but they were a bunch of prickly individualists—men who bucked the system enough to own guns, even when owning guns meant you weren’t “woke.” It also meant they were a pain in the ass.

  This wasn’t a game. Soldiers were coming up the highway with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. If the locals hit that convoy like a bunch of confused girl scouts, it’d be a massacre. Luckily, Noah still couldn’t see the convoy from his Cruiser, even after driving fifteen miles south. Maybe the Mexicans had turned away from their attack on Tucson. Maybe they’d taken surface streets and cut over toward Interstate 10 and headed east. After what Noah had just seen at the parking lot, he would welcome the reprieve. He desperately wanted to hit the Mexican convoy, but not if his volunteers were going to get ground into hamburger. Without air support, this fight could go really bad, really fast. He’d seen it happen before in his own front yard. When the guns come out, what should happen and what does happen part company, fast.

  Noah swerved off the highway and onto an overpass that would give him some elevation. As he scanned the road ahead, he could see that—one way or another—there would be bloodshed. The cartel convoy had stopped to surveil the approach to Tucson not three miles south of Noah’s position. They were stacked on the off-ramp, mirroring Noah’s own surveillance. He could see them and they could probably see him.

  As Noah watched, a sizable portion of the convoy broke east at the off-ramp and turned down surface streets. Either they were heading for Interstate 10, or they had seen the ambush and were setting up a massive flanking maneuver on his citizen militia. A few minutes after the force split, the main convoy began rolling, continuing its move northward up the northbound lanes of Highway 19. The southbound lanes were filled with zombies streaming out of Tucson, oblivious to the coming slaughter.

  Noah couldn’t stick around to figure out if they were being flanked. He’d be overrun by the convoy within minutes if he didn’t get moving.

  “Son of a bitch,” he swore as he set his binoculars on the passenger seat. There was nothing he could do but pray the cartel wasn’t flanking them. If they did, everyone who had come to Noah’s call would be dead in the next two hours.

  Noah threw the Land Cruiser in reverse and backed down the onramp. Once he’d cleared off the military crest of the rise, he flipped a backwards, three-point turn, raced down the off-ramp and crossed over the bar pit between the south and northbound lanes. Then he roared north, his hands kneading the steering wheel.

  Standing to one side of the firetruck, a circle of six men raged at one another. Chief Blanchard stood two steps back from the fray, looking for all the world like a defeated parent.

  “Just LISTEN TO ME! LISTEN TO ME!” one of the men shouted at the top of his lungs. “I am a former SWAT commander and you need to do what I’m telling you to do!”

  “Are you joking?” Another man yelled. “I served in fucking Ramadi and I can promise that no SWAT cop knows shit about what’s about to go down. You’re going to get everyone killed. This isn’t a fucking hostage negotiation!”

  Noah wiped the sweat from his forehead. He knew literally nothing about leading men into battle, but he did know a clusterfuck when he saw one.

  In the knot of arguing men, there was a former SWAT commander, and then some kind of vet—probably a Marine or Army infantry if he’d actually fought in Ramadi, Iraq. Noah knew enough from listening to Old Bill’s war stories to put that much together. The next guy was probably a cop too. He had to be at least fifty and had a pretty good beer gut in contrast to his huge biceps.

  One of the other guys standing in the circle was so loaded down with military kit that he couldn’t actually be military. He was wearing old jungle cammies, Viet Nam-era combat boots, a fully-loaded plate-carrier vest and a boonie cap. Noah figured him for a militia leader.

  “Stop! All of you stop!” a heavy-set man without a visible gun shouted. “Can’t you see that this is exactly like the fight against the Philistines? If we don’t harken to the Lord, RIGHT NOW, we will be defeated. I guarantee it.”

  The other five men looked at the man—obviously some sort of pastor—like he’d just told them he wore ladies’ underwear.

  The militia guy took advantage of the gap in the conversation to champion his own plan. “We need to hit them with chlorine gas. I’m telling you. We give them NO QUARTER! Our militiamen are bringing forward barrels of gas right now. This is just like the book Lucifer’s Hammer. We hit them with chlorine gas and GAME OVER!”

  “Are you crazy? We’ll gas everyone, including our own guys and any locals still in the area. Great idea, GI Joe. Let’s use chemical weapons! What could go wro
ng?” the Iraqi veteran shouted. “Let’s start this thing out with war crimes! Great plan.”

  Noah drew his Glock and blasted a 9 millimeter crater in the asphalt. The six loudmouths froze in differing states of shock. One of them stood with one leg off the ground, his hands over his nuts. Two of them had drawn their handguns.

  Noah spoke, their ears still ringing. “The cartel soldiers are coming. They’ll be here in less than twenty minutes. They’ve stopped at the Pima Mine exit, but they’re getting back in motion right now. They have belt-fed machine guns, rocket launchers, mortars and they have a leader, which puts them way, way ahead of us.” Noah holstered his Glock. The pastor’s mouth still hung open.

  “You.” Noah pointed at the SWAT commander. “Take Militia Guy, all the cops and all the men who will follow you and get to the top of that hill.” He pointed to the big mountain beside the highway. “Do it now.”

  “Who the hell are you?” the SWAT commander fired back.

  “I’m the guy telling you how it is. We need to be on top of that mountain in ten minutes. Please. Pretty please. Stop talking and do it… You, you and you.” He pointed at three more men and the fire chief. “Get everyone else and hide in the river bottom on the opposite side of the highway. Don’t shoot until you can look them in the eyes.” Noah was ninety-percent sure he’d just pulled battle tactics from a Johnny Horton song.