Broken Borders, page 18
Ramsey peeled in the dirt and floored it into the warehouse, and was shocked to see the tunnel entrance inside the paint room. He called it in and flew into the large tunnel. Ramsey wondered what had happened to Bobby, but he could not slow down. He had to catch up and try to rescue Bo Devore before she could be murdered, or even tortured and then executed.
Bo awakened inside the ambulance to find herself handcuffed and gagged. She was strapped on the floor next to Ramiro and could not see sideways out the windows, only up. It was clear to her that she was in a massive tunnel speeding along. Her first reaction was to slam on the brakes, but then she looked down when her legs would not move, and realized her ankles were tied off to the frames of both front seats using some type of nylon ribbon apparently from the medical supplies.
He saw that she was awake, and he grinned down at her menacingly.
Bo struggled as he slid his right hand down inside her blouse and bra and started fondling her left breast.
Ramiro, in broken English, said, “You weel be very wile in bed later.”
Bo tried to curse him, but had tape over her mouth. He got the idea, however. Enjoying any kind of altercation, even verbal, he yanked the tape off her mouth.
He said, “Now you speak, sí? I doan wan a cover that pretty mouth. Eet weel be very busy soon.”
Bo said, “Try it. Just try it! I swear to God, I will bite it off, even if you blow my brains out.”
He started laughing loudly while he sped along.
“You weel geeve eet up to me and all my guys, baby. I weel make you scream and want to die.”
Bo said, “You all may rape me, but you will be raping a dead body, you cowardly son of a bitch, because you will have to kill me first.”
He laughed loudly again and said, “Sí, that might be fun. Maybe I keel you first.”
He really enjoyed his own joke and kept laughing while he drove. Grabbing the wheel with his left hand, he grabbed Bo’s blouse and bra and ripped them from her body with one quick swipe. Her breasts were now totally exposed, and she could do nothing about it, hands cuffed behind her back.
“Meu Deus! (Oh, my God!)” he exclaimed, looking down at her naked beauty.
Ramiro firmly grabbed her breast again, hurting it. Bo bit her lip and stared straight ahead. He pinched her nipple, and she fought back tears, but would not make a sound.
Ramsey tore down the tunnel and saw something moving ahead of him. He slowed as he got closer, seeing it was Bobby Samuels running as fast as he could, and he had already run three quarters of a mile down the tunnel.
The FBI agent skidded to a halt.
Blood seeping from several leg wounds, Bobby jumped in and yelled, “Go! Go!”
They tore out of there flooring the car.
Bobby was very much out of breath, but managed, “Can you imagine how many billions of dollars of drugs has come through this thing?”
Ramsey replied, “I know. I wonder how long it is.”
Bobby said, “We’ll find out soon enough. Bo is alive.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” Bobby said, “We were chasing the guy. He would not stop to pick up a body and carry it.”
“I don’t know,” Ramsey said, “The guy is obviously a sicko, and Bo is very, very beautiful. You never know how these guys think.”
Bobby’s jealousy boiled to the surface and his anger flamed over. “Look, She’s alive! Period! And we have to find her fast!”
Ramsey said, “Hey, sorry. I know she’s your partner. We’ll find her.”
Bobby crawled over the back of his seat and looked around for water. He found an ice chest in the back with a bottle of water and Gatorade. He started drinking, poured more water over his head, and opened a bottle, handing it to Ramsey.
“Thanks.”
Bobby was really worried about Bo. She was his partner and they had been through an awful lot together. He thought about how good it would be to just go to a bar and have a couple drinks. The army cop really wanted the comfort of that right now, but he also knew that was the very last thing he needed.
Ramsey drove as fast as he could, and they were soon coming to the end of the tunnel. Ramiro had considered stopping to shoot the driver of the last car, and blocking the tunnel with it, but there was no way he could do that without his men seeing him, and he could lose his power base.
In the meantime, back in the warehouse in Juarez, the last car of Bobby’s people had gotten out of their vehicle and opened fired on the three ambushers Ramiro had left there. One of Bobby’s people actually made his way into the paint booth and found another LAW, then used it on the sniper up in the ceiling. They shot all three and rushed into the tunnel with their own vehicle.
Ramsey came out in another warehouse in a downtown section of El Paso, and Bobby, now able to use communications again, called in the location of both warehouses. There was a satellite, a Border Patrol helicopter, and a Highway Patrol helicopter up in the sky looking for the gangsters.
Suspecting this, Ramiro drove out of the warehouse slowly, but first changed into the coat and hat of an ambulance driver. He had four of his bodyguards riding in the back of the ambulance, plus his al Qaeda partners, and warned them all to stay out of sight.
As they pulled out of the American warehouse, he tousled Bo’s beautiful auburn locks and laughed again, saying, “My boys back dere. Dey all bang you real good weeth me. We weel use every hole you got.”
Ramiro laughed again at his crude obscene comment.
Bo stuck her chin forward and ignored his taunting.
At the first traffic light, Bo looked up at him, and this shocked him. The calm demeanor made him shiver subconsciously, as she spoke in a very matter-of-fact manner, saying, “Before this is all over, I’m going to kill you.”
Bobby gritted his teeth, saying, “I’m gonna kill Ramiro Maureo.”
Ramsey said, “I know she’s your partner, but is she more than that?”
Bobby thought briefly and responded, “Yeah, Bo is my friend.”
Bobby could not help himself. As they drove, he was alert, but kept thinking back to Arianna. Bobby used to tell her that her hair looked like it had been dipped in fresh honey and the sun slowly melted it off the ends of each strand. She was a ravishing woman with very intelligent eyes, and Bobby knew that Bo was the most like Arianna of any other woman he’d known. He also realized that, if she was not his partner, he would be able to fall in love with her. She was also his best friend. In fact, a much better friend than any male pal he’d ever had.
He’d loved Arianna so deeply and been so excited about the son she was carrying, he just could not ever allow himself to love that way again. Love hurt too much. He knew it really didn’t. Bobby was very macho, but was also very much a romantic. He used to tell Arianna that the only reason he ever dared to accomplish anything of significance was simply because he wanted to show off for her. Now, he knew, he also wanted to show off for Bo, but that was because she was his friend and partner.
Bobby knew what the giant Ramiro was capable of, and all he could do was picture al-Zarqawi sawing off the heads of hostages with his long knife. He quickly fought to push those pictures out of his mind.
Ramiro looked down at Bo as he drove carefully through El Paso traffic.
He said, “Maybe we gangbang you, then cut off thet preety head.”
Bo said sarcastically, “Gee, with my hands cuffed. What a big stud you are!”
He looked at the traffic. At his direction, his other cars were now speeding through traffic northeast toward the distant safe house, but they were taking a different route.
The Muslims could not understand why he kept talking to the woman. She should be used, her throat slit, and then tossed aside, they both thought.
Bobby hung up the cell phone, having just gotten a fix on the caravan, but the ambulance was now driving through traffic at normal speed and was unnoticed from the sky above.
Now the El Paso police were also involved, and were starting to set up roadblocks at various intersections. The cars were now heading down one of the most historically storied streets in Texas history, called simply El Paso Street. In fact, had it not been for the famous shoot-out at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, the shoot-out in El Paso known simply as the “Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight” would have been the West’s most famous cowboy gun shoot-out.
There were five men involved in this gunfight: the El Paso Town Marshal Dallas Stoudenmire; J. A. Ochoa, a college-educated Mexican, who was an innocent bystander; former El Paso Town Marshal George Campbell; El Paso County Constable Gus Krempkau; and a local rancher who was also into cattle rustling named John Hale. On April 14, 1881, at about six P.M., the Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight became a page in Western folklore that started as quickly as it ended.
A wealthy Mexican rancher hired an armed posse of about seventy-five Mexicans to cross the Rio Grande and locate two missing young Mexican vaqueros of his, Sanchez and Juarez, who never returned home. The land and cattle baron was also missing over thirty head of cattle. A local El Paso rancher named John Hale was considered the likely suspect. But a Mexican posse was not something that would go over well with the local populace.
The leader of the posse asked El Paso County Constable Gus Krempkau to join in the search for the missing vaqueros and cattle by helping them check the ranch of John Hale, which was about a dozen or so miles above El Paso in what was known as the Upper Valley, in the general area where the professor was now waiting to rendezvous with Ramiro Maureo and the two al Qaeda and Maureo’s men.
On Thursday, April 14, 1881, the posse, along with Krempkau, did indeed find the bodies of the two vaqueros and the missing cattle at John Hale’s ranch. The posse went to El Paso, and a large mob gathered with John Hale and his buddy, former El Paso Town Marshal George Campbell, in the crowd.
An inquest was quickly set up, and the Mexicans were allowed to retrieve the two bodies of the dead vaqueros and the few head of stolen cattle and leave town peacefully. Although there was a lot of anti-Mexican sentiment, not a shot was fired or a voice heard as they left town.
Then Marshal Stoudenmire crossed the street for dinner at the Globe Restaurant, while Krempkau went to a saloon next door to the restaurant to retrieve his rifle and pistol, which he’d left there during the inquest. However, a confrontation erupted when George Campbell accused Krempkau of taking the side of the Mexicans.
Campbell yelled, “Anybody that is a friend of the Mexicans ought to be hanged!”
Furious, Krempkau said, “George, I hope you don’t mean me!”
“If the shoe fits, wear it!” Campbell yelled back, and walked away.
Then a very drunken John Hale, standing next to Campbell, yelled at Krempkau, “George, I’ve got you covered!”
Then Hale reached over and pulled out one of Campbell’s two pistols and fired a shot at Krempkau, hitting him in the chest, and he suffered a sucking chest wound.
Krempkau drew his own pistol, just as Marshal Stoudenmire ran out the door of the restaurant and onto El Paso Street, drawing his twin .44 Smith and Wesson pistols. All the businesses immediately closed and locked their doors and according to witnesses, Mr. Ochoa was running right behind John Hale, who took off running, when Stoudenmire initially fired and killed the innocent Mexican by mistake. Hale jumped behind a pillar, but Stoudenmire’s second bullet hit him right between the running lights, killing him instantly.
Then Campbell, seeing Hale die, drew his other pistol, and Krempkau, dying, fired twice, hitting him in the gun hand, breaking his right wrist, and then shot him in the foot. Campbell, screaming in pain, picked the gun up with his other hand, and Stroudenmire whirled, shooting him in the stomach, and he now slumped to the ground dying, holding his stomach.
Stroudenmire walked forward still holding his gun on Campbell, who rolled over onto his back and yelled, “You big son of a bitch! You murdered me!”
He then died and the gunfight was over. It actually all took place in less than five seconds according to numerous witnesses, and four men died from that quick storm of gun smoke. Stroudenmire was not hurt.
Although the town aldermen praised and recognized Stroudenmire, others later hired an assassin to kill him, as they were all afraid of him now, The assassin got drunk and slipped when he was getting ready to shoot Stroudenmire with a double-barreled shotgun loaded with 00-buckshot. Stroudenmire drew, aimed, and fired, and accidentally shot him in the testicles, and the would-be-assassin bled to death.
Wyatt Earp, Billy the Kid, Pat Garrett, President William Taft, and Pancho Villa had all made foot tracks in the dust of famous El Paso Street, and now another legend in the making, Major Bobby Samuels, was making skidmarks on the same street with burning squealing tires.
The police were closing in from all sides and in less than a mile, the lead SUV came to a halt and four members of O Grupo Grande jumped out brandishing various weapons. There were El Paso police positioned behind cruisers in front and on both sides of them. One drew up his Uzi and started to fire, when five officers fired at once, and he slumped into a bloody pile right where he had been standing.
The other three looked at what used to be their bro, and their hands could not have gone skyward any faster. While several officers covered, others came forward warning the three to drop to their knees and lock their fingers together behind their heads. They were soon cuffed, searched, Mirandized, and placed in the back of cruisers. The other three SUVs still had men inside trying to figure out what to do. An El Paso police sergeant using a cruiser’s PA system warned them to toss weapons out of their cars and stick their hands out the windows.
Bobby arrived on scene and took a position behind a cruiser, gun in hand. He told the sergeant in charge to remind everyone that Bo was a hostage. He did not know that Bo was miles away cruising along at the speed limit in an ambulance.
Humberto Inigo grew up outside Brasilia, and was the highest-ranking punk of the remaining gangsters. He was in the second car and all were waiting to see what he would do. Humberto called Ramiro on his cell phone, but he did not know he was facing a terrorism task force, and he was not aware, just like insurgents in Iraq, that Bobby’s people were just waiting for a phone call from a cell phone, as they had the technology to trace, eavesdrop, and pinpoint the location of both cell phones.
Unknown to the notorious O Grupo Grande was the unmanned aerial rotor vehicle UARV, or similar helicopters hovering over the El Paso area and being controlled by men and women sitting at large computer screens and digital video screens in Langley, Virginia. The one almost over Humberto, operating on silent mode, had special monitoring equipment on board the five-foot-long helicopter. Humberto dialed Ramiro, who answered immediately, and the device successfully attacked on the A5/1 algorithm of the cell phone transmission and bounced its signal to a satellite miles overhead, and right into the headset and onto the digital audio monitor of the helicopter controller in Langley at the same time it was also displayed for an intelligence analyst a few offices away. The entire conversation was not only recorded, but the bird over Humberto shot a directional azimuth on the cell phone, as well as one on the cell phone being used by Ramiro.
At the same time, an old Mohawk propeller-driven aircraft miles out, equipped with some of the most expensive radio equipment available, was also shooting an azimuth on both cell phones. More intelligence analysts in Langley and in Washington, DC, in the basement of the Pentagon, were seeing the bisection of the azimuths, giving an exact location on Ramiro’s cell phone, even while he moved, as the UARV and Mohawk kept shooting azimuths so they could also get his direction of travel and speed.
Bobby got a call from General Perry.
“Son, one of the guys you have surrounded is on a cell phone with Ramiro Maureo,” Jonathan Perry said, “We have satellite imagery, and Bo is inside an ambulance that Ramiro Maureo is either driving or riding in. They are several miles from you heading northwest. We can track them as long as the ambulance is in sight from our satellite or as long as he is on his cell phone. Why don’t you let us use the UARV that is over you now and sprinkle the guy’s vehicle with Smart Dust and let him go somehow. If there is an alternate rendezvous point, he might lead us to it.”
Smart Dust was something most terrorists did not know about, but had been in development by our government over ten years. The al Qaeda members who did know of it referred to it as “magic dust,” but were not sure how we operate it. “Smart Dust” is basically very miniaturized electronic devices. Very similar to stuff like RFID, or smart cards, or EZ Pass, and even those rice-grain-size tracking devices you can have injected into your pets. But Smart Dust is even more amazing than any of these. Smart Dust takes tracking devices to a whole new level, and Bobby was excited because he knew that Smart Dust was used to help track al-Zarqawi when he was taken out. Smart Dust takes electronic tracking to a whole new level by being small enough to be disguised as dirt, the kind you can pick up in your shoes or clothing. As small as these little bits are, each bit of Smart Dust can be given a unique serial number that, when hit with an “interrogation signal” from troops on the ground, or an aircraft overhead, is broadcast back giving a radio signal to our interceptors hidden overhead, such as the small unmanned helicopters.
If they brought the UARV down in a silent hover over the outlaws’ vehicle, they could hit it with a cloud of Smart Dust, and barring a major thunderstorm, they could follow the vehicle wherever it went.
