Invasion

Invasion

Book 1: Mighty Men Trilogy

David Bergsland

Published by Radiqx Press: Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2017 David Bergsland

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, locales or events is entirely coincidental, or used in a purely fictitious way.

This has been coming for a long time…

It pretty much started in New Mexico in the early 1960s. In northern New Mexico, a group called Alianza Federal de Mercedes led by Reies Lopez Tijerina began advocating the retaking of the Southwest. In June of 1967, he led an assault on the courthouse of Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico fighting for land rights. They shot the jailer Eugolio Salazar in the face, pistol-whipped Undersheriff Dan Rivera, and killed Deputy Sheriff Nicainor Saizan in the process. They took twenty citizens hostage in the courthouse while they made their revolutionary statements to the press—then they fled town.

Reies’ position was that southwestern United States was stolen from Mexico. The basis of his fight was that the treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo (signed at the conclusion of the Mexican-American war in the mid-1800s) stated that the United States was to continue to honor the old land grants issued by Spain during the time of the Conquistadors, and later by the Republic of Mexico.

In their view, the Nation of Aztlan, which is comprised of New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, California, the southern part of Colorado, plus Chihuahua and the rest of the northern Mexican states is destined to be liberated. By the early 1990s there were several large organized groups supporting this radical agenda throughout the United States especially in the southwest.

LULAC, League of United Latin American Citizens, was the most visible with 700 chapters throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. Later they led the fight against the Minutemen in Texas who were patrolling the border to help the INS in 2005. MeChA [Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan] was a very large, well organized student movement. MeChA groups were organized on 90% of the public high school, college, and university campuses of the Southwest. In 2001, their official policy was ratified which stated among many other radical positions that, we vow to work for the liberation of Aztlan. They were the group California’s Lieutenant Governor Bustamante worked for while in college.

By 2017, the map at Aztlan.net included much more territory. It went up into the southwestern corner of Wyoming, the southern and western sides of Colorado, the southwest corner of Kansas, all of Utah, all of Nevada, and the panhandle of Oklahoma.

A definition of Aztlán

The MeChA chapter of the University of Colorado offers the following meaning of the word Aztlán:

"There is a place that the Spirit of Truth has prepared so that it shall be from there from which will be born the Liberation of the Indigenous Peoples. It is called AZTLAN, which means Paradise; it is where the Spirit of Truth lives."

Yaqui Elder Rafael Guerrero, Coronel, Division del Norte de Pancho Villa

Aztlán is the mythical place of origin of the Aztec peoples. In their language (Nahuatl), the roots of Aztlán are the two words: aztatl and -tlan(tli) meaning heron and place of," respectively. ‘Tlantli’ proper means tooth, and as a characteristic of a good tooth is that it is firmly rooted in place, and does not move, the prefix of this word is commonly used in Nahuatl to denote settlements, or place names, e.g. Mazatlan (place of deer), Papalotlan (place of butterflies) or Tepoztlan (place of metal)…

"You would replace -tlan with -tecatl to identify a resident or person from the given place. So, for the examples above, we have that people from Mazatlan would be Mazatecatl, someone from Tepoztlan a Tepoztecatl, and someone from Aztlán an Aztecatl.

"In the origin myths of the Aztecs, they emerged originally from the bowels of the earth through seven caves (Chicomostoc) and settled in Aztlán, from which they subsequently undertook a migration southward in search of a sign that would indicate that they should settle once more. This myth roughly coincides with the known history of the Aztecs as a barbarous horde that migrated from present-day northwestern Mexico into the central plateau sometime toward the end of the first millennium AD, when high civilizations of great antiquity were already well established in the region…

"In Chicana/o folklore, Aztlán is often appropriated as the name for that portion of Mexico that was taken over by the United States after the Mexican-American War of 1846, on the belief that this greater area represents the point of parting of the Aztec migrations. In broad interpretation, there is some truth to this in the sense that all of the groups that would subsequently become the various Nahuatl-speaking peoples of central Mexico passed through this region in a prehistoric epoch, as attested by the existence of linguistically related groups of people distributed throughout the U.S. Pacific Intermountain region, the U.S. southwest and northern Mexico, known as the Uto-Aztecan-Tanoan group, and including such peoples as the Paiute, Shoshoni, Hopi, Pima, Yaqui, Tepehuan, Rara’muri (Tarahumara), Kiowas and Mayos.

What you need to know is these associations were largely emotional. They were religiously taught to the illegal immigrants, especially. The pressure was building and looking for place or method of release.

The trip to Europe 2015

Wednesday: June 24, 1:30 PM, In front of the Louvre, Paris

Deborah Stoner was having a surprisingly wonderful time. She was still amazed that her stepfather had paid for the trip. After that knock-down-drag-out fight she had with her parents last Fall, she was surprised he still spoke with her. But the parents she lived with were remarkable.

She was almost reaching overload status. After the museums in London, even the Rembrandt Museum didn’t add much. She loved his etchings. But that had nothing to do with her excitement today. Now she was in Paris, and Edmund had promised to meet her at the Louvre. And — what could she say about Edmund?

Edmund Martindale: What a surprise he had been. She’d given up on boys.

The toads down at Los Lunas High only had one thing on their mind. She couldn’t help she’d been born good-looking—whatever that meant. She hated it! As soon as anyone started mentioning her appearance, her body, her eyes, her legs, or whatever body part they were intrigued with, she shut them off. She was sick to death of that garbage. It was all a waste of time.

She’d been looking at Samuel Palmer’s etching The Rising Moon at the British Museum. It was a strange drawing. The little undersize shepherd boy seemed lost under the strangely heavy, almost wooden, grained sky. She was having a hard time understanding why old Samuel was so popular. Then she heard a quiet voice next to her.

They seem to have over-inflated those sheep.

After a couple of completely ineffective snorts, Debby broke into laughter. The shushing and tsking only made it worse. She looked at the source of the comment, and she quickly got herself under control.

Do you think they’ll float away? He said.

Maybe they will take the rest of this weird drawing away with them. She felt like she had known him forever.

We should be so lucky. Want to get a cup of coffee? The skinny, denimed young man showed a slight smile.

Coffee? Where do they have coffee over here? He actually knew—and it wasn’t a Starbucks. Her art history class summer study was transformed. They jabbered about drawings and paintings and techniques for hours. But the best thing about him (for her) was his voracious curiosity. His eyes saw everything. He was constantly showing her things she’d never noticed. She visited the little lichen worlds on the bark of trees. She watched threads of contrails stitch clouds together. She saw bees’ butts completely covered with rich pollen.

Conversations with Edmund were like eating a meal. They were satisfying, filling, and expanded her vision of the world. She hadn’t realized how much it mattered until she visited the Rembrandt Museum without him. It was like life itself was gone.

But she would see him in an hour. She’d been waiting two days. She was wandering around the Plaza by the pyramids, not wanting to get in line and miss him. She was a little surprised that security was not more obvious after the Charlie Hebdo massacre. But her mind was clearly elsewhere.

She was so focused on looking for Edmund that she didn’t even notice the large, dark, curly headed man following her at a slight distance. He gradually closed the distance, watching carefully to see that she was alone.

Suddenly he was next to her, sliding his left arm around her waist, pulling her close while sliding his hand up under her jacket. Then Deborah heard Edmund shout, What are you doing! Get your hands off her! Stones felt the man’s arm as it was jerked off her waist. His hand grabbed her shoulder hard as he pivoted around the front of her. She saw a flash of metal as Edmund’s shouting turned to gurgles.

She just reacted. She later remembered ducking away from the hand, but little else. The next thing she remembered was sitting on the ground cradling Edmund’s head in her arms while the rest of the blood in his body gushed out onto her lap from his throat.

Witnesses told the police that she had stepped back, pivoted on her heel, and caught the attacker’s throat with the pointed toe of her boot just above the Adam’s apple. The boot continued up between his ears. Even if she hadn’t broken his neck, the larynx was caved in and closed to any air passage. Deborah had no idea about any of that. Her eyes were completely focused on Edmund’s face. She just sat there tears streaming down her face as the wonder and joy were flushed from her mind by hatred and revenge.

Later she would be overcome with frustration that she had killed the creep without even being conscious of the event. She was no longer the same person. Beauty meant little to her any more. All she could see was viciousness and violence everywhere she looked. She developed a compulsive need to do something about it.

Once she arrived back home in New Mexico, her mother and her husband were at their wits’ end. They counseled and talked, but Deborah was no longer the happy child. She had closed off almost entirely. Rage consumed her. Eventually, it was decided that Ralph would get her trained, to give her something to do so she could eventually work at the problem when she was ready.

Special operations clicked with her immediately. This was something she could do that mattered. It turned out she was exceptionally gifted. Physically she was very fast, extremely athletic, and an intuitive, ruthless street fighter. Weapons took a bit of effort, but she became a crack shot—though she didn’t have the temperament to be a sniper.

Knife throwing also escaped her. She was far too impulsive. But the rest of her martial art skills were honed to a level of deadliness not often seen. Her reaction times often seemed to anticipate any assault. In fact, the teams had a real rough time keeping her reined in. She was feared.

Ralph gave Rachael and Jakob an edited version of her activities. They knew she had a real gift. They knew which operations she was part of because they were the source of many of the ops. But Ralph put her into one of his special teams for difficult work. He knew he could rely on her and the more she worked the better she liked it.

Stones knew nothing of her parents involvement, other than the fact that Ralph and Lisa were very good friends. She talked to them back home using FaceTime when she got a quiet moment before a computer. But life for her was work, training, more training, and more work. To say it was enjoyable would be stretching it, but she found it very satisfying. The basic rage was unabated though. She given up worrying about it. But her mother watched carefully.

First blood

◊Tuesday evening, the fifth of March: 6:49 pm in the Walmart parking lot, Belen, New Mexico

Stones was having murderous thoughts. She scared the heck out of the scattered customers who remained of the hoard getting home from work in Albuquerque, 30 miles north. The look she gave the gangbanger asking if she wanted a piece of him was enough to make the entire small group of Spanish gangsters back off as she stormed out the door of the store. Foul mood doesn’t begin to describe the underlying burning rage that was rearing its ugly head again. It radiated out of her like heat from forge.

She was still very frustrated by her forced vacation. That Pakistani bullet had really messed up her gut. The peritonitis was only a dim memory along with that horrible excuse for a hospital in Jalalabad. She had much better memories of the incredibly good and compassionate care she received in Germany for four months as they repaired the damage in her lower abdomen. It was good to be home with her Mom and Dad, but she was ready to spit at poor Dr. Benjamin at the Veterans hospital in Albuquerque. She was so sick of sitting around.

But she had been dealing with that. She still wasn’t sure when or if she wanted to go back to work, but that was a decision for a future day. The basic problem was that she was back in Belen again. She just knew too much about what went on in this sleepy-looking Spanish railroad town. Having graduated from high school nearly fifteen years ago in Los Lunas several miles north up the Rio Grande, she knew many people in this town. Her stepfather, Jake, often ranted on about all the witchcraft in the town. But Stones knew little of that first hand. There were just a lot of nasty people. The place set her on edge.

She was so focused on containing herself that she barely noticed that it was much darker than it had been—back in the corner of the parking lot where she had been forced to park her old PT Cruiser. Those clerks in Wally World ought to be fired, she muttered as her long legs slammed the nailed heels of her hiking boots against the asphalt, there’s no excuse for that arrogance. I can’t help it that I’m Anglo. The anti-Anglo prejudice of Valencia County was getting a little hard to take. Every time she came back down here it was worse.

She’d come down to meet one of her best friends in college, Maria Alvarez. It had sounded like a good thing to see Mary again. It seemed like another life, ten long years ago and far away. Maria has been along on that trip to Europe nearly a decade ago. In many ways Maria had never recovered.

Stones hadn’t thought about that day for a least a year. She was always surprised by how much the memories still hurt after all these years. She kept it tucked into a special corner of her mind where the hurt was contained and manageable. But it reared its head this afternoon.

Of course Maria’s macho brother had not helped. It was obvious that he had been beating his sister and probably abusing her little girls.

The last straw was when he pawed Stone’s breast as she walked by him on the recliner. He hadn’t even bother to say hello. It wasn’t until Stones grabbed his grasping hand and squeezed until he doubled up in the chair that he backed off. Maria was so beat down that it really torqued her knot of rage. There were old bruises around her neck that were almost faded, but Stones knew where they were from.

Today had been rough. She had forgotten how bad it was. Her pity party was in full swing as she picked her way through the trash, beer cans, used rubbers, and broken glass coating this side of the lot like demented confetti after a nasty party.

She snapped back into the present as she heard little cries of pain and grunting. She became aware that all the lights in this corner of the lot were out. She noticed that they’d been shot out again. She was on full alert now.

She saw the back end of her car just beyond a large black Ram Truck pickup about twenty feet ahead. Even in the gloom the little sticker with the pyramid in the back window was obvious. Brief wonder flashed through her mind about the source of these new trucks. She’d seen five of them this afternoon—all had Mexican plates from Chihuahua.

She rounded the back of the truck, heading for her car on the other side of an old, beat-up van. As she passed the truck she glanced to her right and saw three small dark men beating a young Anglo. He was curled in a fetal position on the ground trying to save himself from the blows of a baseball bat, a chain, and heavy boots.

Her introspective anger exploded into action. She took three quick steps, dropping the sack of groceries and her purse, and launched herself feet first onto the back of the slightly larger man swinging the bat. She felt both of her heels sink deep into his upper back as he was knocked on his face and she fell on top of him. Glancing left she heard the man with the chain shout. She saw him start swinging the chain around his head. She quickly rolled right. Pushing up with her right hand, she found it wrapped around the handle of the bat that had been knocked out of the big man’s hands as he hit the ground face first.

Planting her left foot, she reached out with her left hand and grabbed the chain as it flew toward her. The searing pain of the chain as it slid through her unprotected hand really jacked up the adrenalin. Her hand locked on the chain and she twisted violently—pulling the chain while planting the end of the bat on the asphalt. This gave her enough leverage to kick the third man behind her in the throat with the side of her boot.

The unexpected jerk on the chain yanked the second man into a surprised stagger toward her. Debbie leaped toward the chain swinger with the bat cocked over her shoulder. The man she had first jumped tried to grab her other arm, but merely succeeded in ripping the sleeve of her blazer. Shrugging out of the remnants of her sleeve, she slapped chain man on the side of his head with the bat. He went down like a slab of beef.

Whirling on the ball of her other foot, she almost avoided the man with the sleeve. But he knocked her down with a glancing punch to the side of her face that propelled her—sliding on her knee—toward the back of the truck. She leveraged herself up with the bat. The third man was clutching his throat, gasping for air. She knocked him to the ground with a full swing of the bat to his stomach. Solidly swinging the bat, she hit the first thug in the back of the head—before he could cause her any more trouble.

With the three of them on the ground, two of them writhing in pain and the third totally unconscious, she shouted at the Anglo. Get up! Get out of here!

The man staggered to his feet, ran over to his van, and slammed the side door—leaving the spilled bags of groceries on the pavement. He ran around the van, jumped in, started the engine with a roar and took off.

Debbie grabbed her purse and bag and ran to her car, unlocking it with the fob. She jumped into the PT Cruiser, flicked the switch, and mashed the accelerator to the floor. The immense torque of the electric motors almost surprised the computer into smoking its tires most of the way to the exit of the parking lot.

Broadsliding west from the lot onto the access road, she raced for I-25 at well over a hundred miles per hour. With her heart pounding from the adrenalin and exertion, she glanced in her rearview mirror as she continued to accelerate through the ramp heading north to Los Lunas.

She hit the freeway at nearly 140 miles per hour. There were no lights on the dark road in back of her, so she let herself think a little. She lifted the accelerator, letting the motors absorb some energy and put it back into the capacitors to recharge the batteries. Within