Free Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista by Matthew Bracken Page A

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