Conquistadors

by Jeff Kirkham

  For the first time—her eyes framed in both sorrow and resolve—Tavo couldn’t see his daughter. For the first time, he saw only his enemy.

  Chapter 26

  Noah Miller

  The Pecos River Refinery, Artesia, New Mexico

  “Sin and shame

  Remorse and pain

  Your damned credibility.

  Here and now,

  Lay them down,

  At the Big Man’s feet.”

  The Crusader

  In the middle of the night, cartel patrols had tapered off to nothing. They’d been playing cat and mouse all day. His men—Border Patrol agents and hard fighters from the town of Artesia—would fire a volley of rifle rounds at the refinery from over a mile away. Then, they’d displace another mile back and wait for the cartel to send a squad of narcos to hunt them.

  That’s what the American partisan fighters had begun calling them… “Narcos.” Not “Mexicans” or “Cartels” but “Narcos.” Noah hadn’t been to war prior to this moment, but Bill had filled his nights with stories about Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa and every other dank corner of misery on the planet. For each enemy, they’d had a name.

  Hajjis, T-men, Ali Babas, Skinnies, Daeshbags, Talis, Savages, Camel Jockeys, Towel Heads. Jihadis…

  In the war between the Southwest and the cartel, “narcos” rose as the preferred nomenclature. In the cultural collapse of post-America, the term threaded the gap between a burning hatred of the invaders and a still-percolating fear of racism. Plus, half the guys fighting the cartel looked like ethnic Mexicans. Even roughneck American fighters couldn’t use a racial slur when the guy next to him in the foxhole might have skin as brown as suede shoes. So, “narcos” it’d be.

  When a squad of narcos came out to strike their last position, his teams would lob a few rounds at the men themselves then scatter into the desert. An hour or two later, they’d rejoin at a rally point and do it all over again. But the cartel squads had either learned their lesson—that assaulting little knots of snipers wasn’t buying them anything—or they’d turned their attention to other matters. That gave Noah and his men freedom to plink away at the refinery for as long as their ammunition held out.

  Noah hoped the plan was working. The sniper teams had only dug up a single .50 caliber rifle in town—a bolt action beast with a huge scope that’d run out of ammo sometime during the night. With the big fifty down, they’d been hitting the storage tanks with .308s, 30-06s, .338s or whatever big hunting rifles they could find. Most of the hunting in this region had focused on javelinas and small Coues deer, so large caliber hunting rifles were rare. Noah’s men hadn’t confirmed if the large caliber rifles were perforating the double-skinned fuel storage tanks. He wondered if maybe the narcos had stopped sending out assault squads because his snipers weren’t doing any damage.

  His team of snipers had just sent a volley into a tank inside of the facility. It was so far away that Noah could barely see the big white cylinder through his 10x Nikons. There was no way he’d be able to confirm a fuel leak through even the most powerful binoculars.

  Noah turned to check with the four other guys and they all shrugged. Nobody had optics that could see a .308-inch stream of gas from over a mile away. Noah wasn’t sure such an optic even existed.

  The five men hunkered behind a big bitterbrush. Two of the guys had the close-cropped hair of Border Patrol trainees and the other three wore mis-matched camouflage and carried hunting rifles—obviously guys from town.

  “I’m out of here,” Noah whispered. “You guys keep up the good work.” He wasn’t sure why they all whispered, except that it felt like the thing to do when hunting men. They were over a mile from the nearest enemy. “I’m going to boogie back to my Cruiser and drive over to Brownfield across the Texas border. I heard they have some fifty caliber rifles over there. Maybe I can get some ammo and a few more blasters. Let Rankin know that I’ll be back in twelve hours, give-or-take.” The men nodded. Captain Rankin was the ranking officer at the Border Patrol facility, and he had become their de facto leader. Noah couldn’t even guess how many men they had in the command. They’d been running around in the desert raising hell, so it was impossible to get a head count.

  As far as Noah could tell, they were winning. At very least, they were shooting at the narcos and not all getting killed for their effort. The best thing he could do at this point was to rally more guns and gather more ass-kickers.

  Noah slapped the guy next to him on the back, exchanged a silent nod, and took off at a trot toward his Cruiser.

  Chapter 27

  Tavo Castillo

  The Pecos River Refinery, Artesia, New Mexico

  Tavo glowered as he watched gasoline pour onto the desert sand in a stream as thick as a garden hose. He thought about finding a stick and shoving it into the hole, but the godforsaken desert didn’t grow anything big enough to do the job. This had been the sixth bullet-size leak he’d been shown. He didn’t know much about hydrodynamics, but a storage tank this large must be generating enormous pressures—more than a stick could defeat.

  “I hope you killed the motherfuckers who did this,” Tavo seethed.

  Alejandro shrugged, looking for all the world like a hapless idiot. Tavo felt like shooting him in the face.

  “We’ve shot a dozen desert rednecks, but they’re firing from ridiculous distances. It’s almost impossible to hold a perimeter when the enemy shoots from over two miles away and lobs bullets onto the target. It’s hard to miss a fuel tank that’s three hundred feet wide and sixty feet tall. They can just about shoot from the Texas border.” Alejandro guffawed and Tavo again suppressed the urge to kill him.

  “You say we’re out of patches?” Tavo already knew the answer. Alejandro nodded.

  “What’s the status on the Abrams tanks?” Tavo asked.

  “A group of tank crew left last night. There must’ve been some kind of pact, because all but twenty or thirty holdouts scrounged up vehicles and headed back in a caravan toward El Paso.”

  “Then we hit them tonight.” Tavo started to walk away—he needed a drink of water—but he couldn’t turn his back on the wasted gas. “Find wood posts. Have them whittled down and pound them into these holes. If we don’t slow the loss of the fuel, we’ll end up stranded here.”

  THWACK! Something struck the tank and reverberated like a bass drum. A full five seconds later, a rifle shot sounded on the horizon.

  Whumpf.

  Tavo searched the storage tank for another leak, but the bullet must’ve impacted above the fuel level since there was still only one amber fountain.

  “The first thing we’re going to do once we get those Abrams fueled up and moved here is to level this shitty town,” Tavo said, indulging his rage. “I want the mayor and I’m going to make him bleed.”

  “I don’t think the mayor is responsible for the organized resistance. Weirdly, this little town not only has the biggest refinery in the state, but they also have a huge Border Patrol training facility. It’s built on the old community college campus. You can bet your balls that the dudes we smoked out on the perimeter yesterday were from there. They looked military to me, or former military at least.”

  “Have you taken it down?”

  “Taken what down?” Alejandro asked too quickly.

  “The fucking training facility,” Tavo shouted.

  “No. You said we should hold the refinery. Other than checking on the air base with the tanks, I haven’t allowed anyone to go outside the wire for the last day. I didn’t want to get men wasted for no good reason.”

  Tavo reminded himself that Alejandro had been to war enough to play it smart. No reason to roll up on a federal paramilitary training camp without overwhelming force. Now that Tavo had brought another five hundred men from the ranch, Alejandro’s list of options had expanded.

  With this latest outpouring of local resistance, Tavo sprouted a new hatred for Americans. These assholes weren’t willing to do a damn thing to save their coun
try when it could still be saved. Now that the absurd American circus had collapsed, they were lately fighting and dying like real patriots. Where was their patriotism before, as they squabbled on Facebook about transvestite bathrooms or beat each other up in the streets while burning their own flag? In Tavo’s mind, they had already forfeited the right to bitch. The time for taking personal responsibility for their homeland had passed while they were posting memes about cats.

  THWACK!…whumpf. Another shot echoed across the desert.

  He hated to admit it, but this whole, rural America fight did, in fact, remind him of the movie Red Dawn. He had watched it at least a dozen times as a kid, and he remembered the Spanish voiceover of Jed Eckert played by Patrick Swayze. He had even dreamed about dying heroically someday, on a park bench with the little brother he never had, sacrificing himself to help innocent children live.

  How far the years had carried him from that silly dream. How much he’d learned in later years in orphanages about abuse and terror. He’d learned that he’d much rather be the victor than a defeated hero.

  He couldn’t quite cast himself as Colonel Bella—the Cuban insurgent invader in the movie—but he couldn’t avoid the relentless truth: if he pushed long and far enough, he would run into American partisans flying the banner of the “Wolverines.” He might not see himself as Colonel Bella, but they certainly would. As they were defeated and died, they would cast him as the bad guy in their own war drama.

  Tavo’s thoughts turned to Sofía—always back to Sofía. He hoped she had inherited his efficiency of intellect, but today he doubted it. Of all the people he had been able to read like open books and to bend around his will, his daughter eluded him. Would she cast him as the bad guy in the end too?

  Tavo turned to grab a bottle of water from his Humvee and Alejandro followed.

  “We take the tanks tonight,” Tavo repeated. “Organize the men now, or it’ll be hell in the dark. We will hit the American soldiers at 0400 hours when they’re foggy.”

  Cannon AFB, Clovis, New Mexico

  They laid down the chain-link fence along a fifty-yard section of the Whispering Winds golf course, tucked inside the north boundary of Cannon Air Force Base. Tavo led his men across the third fairway, winding through the sand bunkers and rolling grass hills. Their recon detail had found no roving patrol around the base and only a night watch over the two-dozen remaining tank drivers, posted around eight, tidy rows of M1 Abrams tanks lined up in front of a massive airplane hangar. Most of the soldiers slept inside the hangar, oblivious to the two hundred men surrounding their position.

  Tavo approached a sleeping American guard, his head nodding against his chest, gray and grainy through Tavo’s white phosphor night vision goggles. He stepped behind the man, clamped his hand over his mouth and slid his razor-sharp Cold Steel Vaquero across his throat. The movement was so smooth that the man might have died in his dreams.

  Tavo turned to make sure the squad of operators had seen him draw first blood. It didn’t hurt to build his personal legend as a warrior. He had hoped to see the men wide-eyed and impressed, but the soulless oculi of their NVGs stared back at him, waiting for his orders.

  He held up two fingers and stabbed a knife-hand to the left, sending a fire team to check for guards around the south edge of the tanks.

  Boom-boom-boom!

  The small hours of night came alive with the crack of M4 rifle fire, probably a dying American’s last act.

  He ran across the tarmac toward the open door of the airplane hangar, weaving between the Abrams tanks and the sleeping men. They couldn’t afford for even one of the tanks to join the fight.

  Before he could make the hangar door, the dark erupted in a mass of gunfire. Tavo reached the last row of tanks and a round pinged off the edge he was using for cover. He ducked back, but not before seeing muzzle flashes coming down the line, pouring fire into the hangar. His men had overrun the tanks and were fighting in the no-man’s-land between the tanks and the hangar.

  “Cease fire. Cease fire. All units hold fire.” Tavo hunkered down and spoke into his command radio, “Take and hold cover behind the tanks. We need some of the Americans alive.” Rounds pinged and wizzed as they impacted the ceramic armor, caterwauling into the dark before dawn.

  As the American soldiers set up defensive positions inside the hangar, the gunfire dwindled. The dark gave the Americans no target so long as Tavo’s own men refused to provide muzzle flashes to focus their fire. He suspected the Americans had neither night vision nor electronic sights, which meant they’d be shooting blindly through their open sights.

  His men, on the other hand, had NVGs, electronic sights and IR lasers. Tavo didn’t ask, but he doubted he’d lost anyone to the barrage. Given another few minutes of fighting, his men would go through the tankers like a badger through a henhouse. Tavo hoped enough of the Americans had survived the first exchange of fire to give him what he needed.

  He shouted in a Texan drawl, “Send out your CO for a parlay. We’re all Americans here and we don’t want to shoot anyone else. Nobody needs to get hurt. We’re on the same side.” Nobody here had been around to see Beto use the same ruse on the National Guard, so Tavo saw no reason not to borrow it.

  A minute later, someone yelled back from the shadows of the dark airplane hangar. “I’m coming out.”

  Tavo popped the suppressed Glock out of his Crye GunClip and called the officer over. The man stepped around the corner of the tank and Tavo pressed the end of the suppressor into the officer's chest.

  Pfft. Pfft.

  He injected two rounds into the man’s heart and dropped him without a whimper.

  There was no point in negotiating with officers. They would only present hurdles. It was the NCOs and enlisted men Tavo wanted to talk to.

  He waited five minutes before doing anything. Confusion, at this point, would work in his favor.

  “Tankers!” Tavo yelled in his best mimic of the tone of the officer’s voice. “Form up on me. Bring your weapons.” Tavo’s multicam fatigues matched the tankers’ multicam fatigues, so when Tavo waved his tallest man forward to stand in the gap, facing away from the hangar, the Americans didn’t know if they were looking at the backside of their officer or the backside of an enemy combatant. In any case, the sun had only begun to show the slightest color on the eastern skyline and any disorientation would add to Tavo’s advantage.

  A half-dozen flashlights flicked out of the dark corners of the hangar and the bewildered soldiers saw their commanding officer standing erect in front of their tanks at parade rest, as though forming up.

  If you show people what they expect to see, they will usually believe it. It wasn’t the first time Tavo had used that trick.

  Men rambled out of the hangar, their M4s in a variety of postures of self-defense, but all moving toward the parade area. Tavo flicked his tac light on and blinded the soldiers, waving for his men to do likewise. His men rotated their NVGs up on their helmets and followed Tavo’s lead. One-by-one, they drifted to the parade area and lined up, stopping short of their CO out of habit. When one NCO finally moved up to address the officer, Tavo came out from behind the Abrams and headed him off.

  In the dim light of morning, wearing a bump helmet and tactical gear, Tavo looked nothing like a Mexican national. Plus, he had almost no accent.

  “Son,” Tavo put his hand on the man’s chest and held him back. “We all want the same thing here. We want to get America back on its feet. We need your help and there are foreigners crossing the border even as we speak. They need to be stopped, so I’d appreciate it if you ordered your men to lay down their weapons and help us get a couple of these tanks moving toward Tucson. They’re going to need the help.”

  The man looked Tavo over in the dark and nodded. The NCO didn’t use his flashlight to get a better look at Tavo, probably because it’d be rude to shine a flashlight in another man’s face two paces away. Tavo smiled; people were so awesomely predictable. The NCO had just sacrificed his
entire unit over a question of good manners.

  “Form up, men,” the Sergeant shouted. More men filtered out of the hangar and joined them. Tavo counted twenty-six.

  “Surround them,” Tavo ordered into his radio. All two hundred of his men converged from the dark and pointed in at the twenty-six Americans, most of whom were just recovering their night vision from having looked into the flashlights.

  “What’s this?” the NCO finally realized his mistake.

  Tavo drew his suppressed Glock and pointed it at the man’s face. “Shut up and put your rifles on the ground or we’ll execute you all.” The cartel soldiers followed his lead, stepped closer, and tightened the noose.

  “Who are you?” the NCO stalled for time.

  Pfft—snap! Tavo shot him through the bridge of his nose. With his left hand, he grabbed the collar on the man’s jacket and pulled the sagging body close as cover from any incoming fire.

  Another American in the line stumbled—the bullet had over penetrated and hit him in the throat. The wounded man folded sideways and slumped into the man beside him. Half the Americans had been in the process of laying down their weapons when the suppressed shot had killed their NCO. Since it hadn’t sounded like a true gunshot, their reaction had been mixed.

  Tavo yanked the dead man close and shouted to the group. “If you lift your rifle you die.”

  A volley of fire from his men ripped through the Americans standing in front of the hangar. More men keeled over onto the asphalt. The shooting died off again.

  “Get your hands off the guns. It’s the only way you live to see the morning sun.” Tavo had lowered the man to his knees and he’d gone down with him, still using the dead NCO as a human shield. He congratulated himself for the bit of poetic flair. Fully half of the soldiers had looked toward the sunrise. Then they dropped their rifles. Never seeing another sunrise just seemed more tragic than simply dying.