Conquistadors

by Jeff Kirkham

  Tavo thought about the supply chain again. If they were already having problems at the refinery, the roads between there and Buckeye would be vulnerable to ambush as well.

  “What’s the other good news?” Tavo hated that Alejandro made him ask.

  “I sent a team north to check Cannon Air Force Base—just to make sure we weren’t going to get our asses shot off by F-16s, you know. The base didn’t have any airplanes, anywhere. It was like they’d pulled up stakes and moved the whole operation somewhere else.”

  “How’s that really good news?”

  “Check this out; almost a hundred M1 Abrams tanks are sitting on the runway, at an airbase. There are soldiers meandering around, but they look like they’re waiting for something.”

  Tavo rubbed his face. “Explain to me how having a hundred main battle tanks near your position is good news.”

  “These guys aren’t here to fight and they’re not close to the refinery—it’s over a hundred miles. We captured an American soldier who was AWOL—trying to sneak away from the base at night. He told us that they were ordered to wait at Cannon AFB for some muckety-muck from Washington to land with his family. The VIP was supposed to arrive three days ago and he’s still a no-show. The armored brigade combat team has been sliced up and most of the armored personnel carriers and Strykers have been reassigned to Colorado Springs to wait for the VIP there. They left the tanks and a few guys because they didn’t need them in Colorado Springs and because the Abrams burns too much gasoline to make the drive. I’ll bet you a case of the good stuff that those tanks are going to be up for grabs.”

  “Don’t they require jet fuel?” Tavo remembered something to that effect.

  “Nope. They’ll run on cat piss if the cat got into the tequila the night before.”

  “Are they armed?” Tavo had his fill of finding weapons but no ammunition.

  “They each have a full, combat load-out of XM1028 Canister rounds according to the guy we caught. All we need are the ignition codes.”

  Finally, the world clicked for Tavo. With a hundred M1 Abrams tanks, no citizen militia, or even an army base, could withstand him. The only thing that would stop tanks would be more tanks or the kind of air assets that only an organized nation could muster.

  “Take the tanks as soon as possible,” Tavo ordered.

  “Hang on, Hoss.” Alejandro chuckled.

  Tavo didn’t like his tone. The other two lieutenants had accepted Tavo as their commanding officer and their whole demeanor toward him had shifted. Alejandro was shaping up to be a problem.

  “Canoso, we can’t hit these tanks until they stand down. If we go rolling in there with trucks and machine guns, if even just one of those tank crews jock up, we’re going to wake a dragon that we won’t be able to put back to sleep. We need to let declining morale do its job. Let the cancer fester. When enough soldiers give up on the mission, we’ll have our operational window. Until then, we’d be giving them a reason to go hard.”

  Tavo didn’t like the pushback, but he sensed Alejandro was playing it smart.

  “Agreed. Stand fast. Secure the refinery. Let’s set next comms for twelve hundred hours tomorrow. I’m returning to the ranch to send another company of commandos your way. We secured a national guard garrison outside of Phoenix, complete with up-armored Humvees, so now we have two hard points within America.”

  With two fortified locations inside the U.S., they could have their U.S. gangland soldiers meet their main forces without crossing into Mexico, shaving off hundreds of miles of travel. Beto’s business territory had been west of the Rocky Mountains. Saúl had owned the Midwest and Alejandro had been working the growing markets on the east coast. Their mission would pick up speed now that their street soldiers and commandos didn’t have to travel into Mexico to join up.

  For sure there would be attrition. Tavo couldn’t expect more than about twenty percent of the fighters to follow orders all the way to Hermosillo—not with their families being left behind in urban hellholes. It’d help that their rendezvous had been moved a few hundred miles closer, but he could expect at least the same level of desertion as the American military. The promise of plunder would help keep his army together. With the tanks, anything seemed possible. Armor seemed almost too good to be true.

  It all hinged on the tanks, Tavo concluded. The refinery, the army depot, Salt Lake City. If he got his hands on those tanks—and the gas to maneuver them—he would rule everything from the California High Sierras to the Rocky Mountains.

  A hundred M1 Abrams main battle tanks waited in the desert; low-slung and compact like a prizefighter. He’d gawked at the M1 Abrams when they rolled over the top of Saddam Hussein’s forces during the Gulf War. He remembered grainy video of the M1 Abrams plowing through fields of smoldering, Russian T-72s. If memory served, each Abrams carried forty 120mm rounds. His tanks had hopefully been loaded with anti-personnel rounds rather than anti-tank sabots. Those hundred tanks would hand Tavo 4,000 shots from the main guns and hundreds of thousands of bullets from the secondary machine guns—either .50 caliber or 7.62 mm. He could exterminate whole groups of insurgents like they’d faced in Tucson, blowing through them like Gulliver stomping Lilliputians. Just one M1 Abrams would’ve sent that ambush in an entirely different direction.

  Tavo needed to get back to Hermosillo, consolidate forces and take command from Alejandro at the refinery in New Mexico. Fate awaited him, like a queen at the altar.

  One hundred tanks. Undefeatable armor. Hundreds of thousands of rounds. In a world without technology, he would be god. He could see the path of conquest, perhaps all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

  He hung up the satellite phone and returned it to the pocket in his vest. Tavo gazed down the creosote-speckled canyon descending from the National Guard armory. In the distance, a wedge of green showed between the mountains—the Gila river bottom glowing in the midday sun.

  So much life force energy had been thrown to the wind in the American collapse. American prosperity had required incredible organization, tremendous control. The Americans believed that democracy would blindly drive that life force forward, as though it was a birthright.

  Tavo knew better. Everything in his life had demonstrated the opposite—that nature naturally tended toward chaos and destruction. No birthright stood the test of time. He had the scars to prove it.

  The Americans’ miscalculation would be his window of opportunity. He had prepared for this moment, not quite seeing the details, but sensing the opening for years. Those tanks, that refinery, and his fate as emperor. He would have them all in his hands within the next seventy-two hours, and there was nothing he wouldn’t sacrifice to make it so.

  Chapter 24

  Noah Miller

  Highway 82, East of Hope, New Mexico

  “I wasn't searching for more,

  Than what I had yesterday, every day.

  I wasn’t searching for the door,

  To find a way from all the gray.

  Then you appeared—a brown-eyed wonder.”

  The Crusader

  Noah drove through the night. The 10 freeway became Highway 70, which then became Highway 82. East of Hope, New Mexico, his headlights picked up the telltales of oil and gas drilling. Pumps and holding tanks dotted the rolling expanse of scrub, like mechanical mosquitos, sucking the corpse of an ancient, rotted forest buried under ten trillion tons of sand.

  He had used up the last of the fuel canisters he’d lifted from Bill’s barn. From that point forward, scavenging gas would need to become a priority.

  He’d stolen a few hours from the night to hide the Cruiser on a side road and grab some sleep. The rest had done him good, but over the last hour, the monotony of the road had lulled him into a hypnotic state.

  Suddenly, a pickup truck materialized like a ghost at the edge of his headlights, parked across both lanes. Noah stood up on the brakes and the Cruiser howled in protest. The vehicle fishtailed from side-to-side, slipped onto the sandy shoulder and s
lid into the sagebrush. Remarkably, it didn’t flip.

  Noah leapt out of the cab and hit the ground, his Glock drawn. He stared into the black desert, seeing only the vague outline of the pickup truck in the halo of the Cruiser’s headlamps.

  “Are you going to make me kill you?” a baritone voice shouted from somewhere in the dark. “I’ve got the shot and I know you don’t, so just walk away now and save me one more ding in my banged up conscience.”

  That seemed like a lot of talk from a road bandit, Noah thought. He squirmed deeper under the carriage of the Land Cruiser, though he knew it was futile. He’d been ambushed and that usually ended just one way for the guy on the wrong side of the surprise. The music in the Cruiser kept playing and it added a surreal dimension to highway robbery. It was like a soundtrack that gave the scene an epic feel, as though a screenwriter had thought this moment up to prove the hand of God. Noah shook his head to cast off the cobwebs. He was being robbed, that much was certain. His best bet was to play for time.

  “I wasn't searching for more,

  Than what I had yesterday, every day.”

  “I’m going to set my gun on the tire,” Noah shouted over the music and squirmed out from underneath the Cruiser. He slowly got to his feet and placed the Glock on the tire. His Winchester was still inside, shoved between the seat and the console, but he had little hope of reaching it. In any case, the guy was still buried in the night.

  “Thank you, fine sir. Now, please walk backward toward my headlights with your hands up.” The truck lights flipped on, making it even harder to penetrate the dark.

  Noah backed up, as instructed. He heard a shuffle on the roadway, then the bandit grabbed his right hand with a ferocious grip, folded it behind Noah’s back and cuffed him with flex cuffs. The man patted him down, found his folding knife and removed it. The whole operation screamed “law enforcement” to Noah.

  The man turned Noah around by his elbow. Noah stared into the face of the biggest Mexican he had ever seen. The guy had to be six foot tall and well over two-hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle with a chin so strong he could be mistaken for a cartoon character. He wore a chest rig full of AR-15 mags and other assorted gear, a gray-and-black American flag velcroed to the strap.

  Definitely not cartel, Noah concluded. Definitely law enforcement.

  “Hot damn. I always wanted a Land Cruiser. What’s it? An Eighty-two?” The music kept playing and Noah caught himself feeling an upwelling of good will that contrasted with the fact that he was about to lose everything he owned.

  “Eighty-four,” Noah answered reflexively. There was never a wrong time to talk about his Land Cruiser, he reasoned.

  “I knew a guy once with an Eighty-two. Looked exactly the same. The guy was an asshole, but I did love his Jeep.”

  Noah bristled visibly in the light splashing off the headlights.

  The big Mexican let his AR-15 dangle on its strap and waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know you guys hate it when people call it a ‘Jeep.’”

  “If you’re going to steal it from me, at least don’t disrespect it,” Noah chuffed.

  “I’m sorry about that. I got no choice. I need your stuff. What can I say? I’ve got a shit-load of kids. I’ll leave you enough water and you can walk back to the town.”

  Noah decided to press the angle. “Why would a cop be out here in the middle of the desert robbing travelers? Don’t you have people? Don’t you have a home?”

  The big guy exhaled and slumped a bit. Noah wondered if the music wasn’t doing a job on the guy’s mind too. “I’m not a cop and I need to get my kids back to Phoenix. Their mother is going to be losing her mind, and I don’t have shit out here in the middle-of-nowhere. I was instructing a course and it was my weekend to have them. I got caught with my balls hanging out. But, hey. Enough about me. You should start walking.” He pointed west. “Town’s that way.”

  “Take me with you. I’ll help with the kids,” Noah blurted out, not sure where he was going with it. The music swelled on an emotional tidal wave, as though he and the big Mexican thief would now go on to conquer the world together.

  “The fuck you will…” the big Mexican stroked his bushy, black mustache. “You’ll cut my throat the moment you get the chance, and then where will my kids end up?” But his tone of voice belied the truth: he’d considered the idea.

  “Plus,” Noah pushed his advantage. “You don’t want to take them to Phoenix. A column of Mexican cartel is taking down cities along the I-19. Your kids are safer out here.”

  The big guy stroked his mustache again. “You just came from Phoenix?” he cocked his head as though he doubted it. Noah decided to tell the truth.

  “No. I just came from Tucson and a group of a few hundred of us ambushed the cartel outside of town. After that, they went around the city instead of through it, and kept heading northwest. I’m guessing they’ll hit Phoenix tomorrow morning.”

  The big guy nodded, still lost in thought. “I should never have opened my big mouth. I’m not very good at robbing people, turns out.” He laughed at himself. “Rule Number One: don’t start a conversation with the asshole you’re trying to rob… And what the hell is this music?”

  “Rule Number One should be ‘Don’t Rob People.’” Noah said, pushing his luck.

  “I take it you don’t have children.” The big Mexican turned Noah around to face away from him. There was a flick of a knife and Noah felt the flex cuffs cut away. “Don’t make me regret not robbing you better.”

  Noah turned around to face the man. He consciously refrained from rubbing his wrists.

  “So, what now, big guy?” Noah asked, standing nose-to-nose.

  “Now you help me with my kids, right?” The big man offered Noah a wry smile, inviting him to either throw down or get along. Noah thought about hitting that big jawbone with a right hook. He rubbed the hand, knowing from past experience that he’d probably break it in the process. He knew the look on the big Mexican’s face from past experience too—the look that said, this wouldn’t be my first rodeo, either, and I can handle myself just fine in a fistfight.

  With the help of the ridiculous music, Noah contemplated his own mission. He didn’t have any “people” anymore, with his family gone and his dad now dead. That sad truth left him free to help anyone he pleased, even a highwayman and his kids.

  “By cutting me loose, you’re missing out on owning one of the finest vehicles ever to grace the highways of America,” Noah warned, and smiled.

  “True. But I can only drive one vehicle at a time and all my shit’s already in the back of my truck. My name’s Rocco.” The big man held out an oversized hand.

  “Noah Miller.” They shook hands.

  “Follow me.” Rocco turned and walked toward his truck, barely looking over his shoulder as he did. Noah noticed the man’s right hand drifting to the pistol grip of his AR. He was trusting Noah, but he wasn’t an idiot.

  Noah picked up his Glock from the tire and holstered it. At this point, there was no advantage in trading bullets with the guy. If he was what he said he was—a desperate father—Noah would know soon enough. If not, Noah could drive away across the desert. Plus, given the switch-up of songs that’d happened during their conversation, Noah had gotten it in his head that the ghosts that inhabited his cassette deck liked this guy.

  And, as he’d reminded himself earlier, he didn’t have “people” of his own anymore. Sooner or later, he’d probably have to find some. Despite the fact that he’d planned on robbing Noah, the big Mexican was, more or less, part of Noah’s tribe: a man who talked straight and could handle a shooting iron. If the man had kids, then Noah wasn’t going to blast him.

  True to his word, the big Mexican did have a shit-load of kids. Five dusty-faced children slept around the campfire in sleeping bags. Rocco’s oldest son must’ve been fourteen, which explained why the man didn’t really need Noah’s Land Cruiser. He didn’t have anyone who could drive it.

  Rocco dug around
in his cab and came out with a bottle of Leadslinger’s whiskey.

  “Want a nip?” Rocco held up the bottle like an apology.

  “You are forgiven, my son.” Noah made the sign of the cross and reached for the bottle. They both dropped into camp chairs. Rocco stirred up the glowing sage branches and added a few more.

  “We’re coming from the town of Artesia,” Rocco explained. He took the bottle back and sucked the whiskey through his teeth. “A cartel seized the refinery there. That’s why we left. I can’t go to war while I’ve got my kids with me, much as I’d like to.”

  “What the hell were you doing in the middle of New Mexico?” Noah asked, taking the bottle back.

  “Instructing pistol/carbine at the Border Patrol training facility. I brought the kids up for the week. I wanted to show ‘em around the campus and maybe take my oldest out on the driving course—give him a little off-road, evasive driving experience. Then everything went to shit.”

  “What now?”

  Rocco shook his head. “Man, I’ll be honest: I’m high-centered. If we were back in Phoenix, at least then I’d have my shit. I have food in the pantry back home—sacks of beans and rice. I even have a big barrel of water out back. I never thought about being stuck on a training rotation when I laid that stuff up at home. The only reason I’ve got my gat with me is because I was instructing. If not for that, I’d have a whole bunch of nothing. That’s why I set up the roadblock. We’re about to run out of food and I need to turn bullets into eats. Know what I mean?”

  Noah heard the regret in the man’s voice, and he didn’t envy him the position he was in. “I’ve got plenty of food in the Cruiser. You can have some of it. It should be enough to get you home.”

  Rocco tilted the bottle toward Noah. “Much obliged. You don’t have to do that, but I appreciate it all the same. Where are you headed?”