Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista Read Free

50 yards behind Big Kendra.  The two men tracked Ranya with their eyes hidden behind sunglasses, their faces obscured by wide-brimmed tan desert hats.
    No matter what direction a prisoner might try to run, one or both of the gun guards would have an easy shot.  Their iron-sighted Mini-14s were crummy rifles, provided to prison guards solely because they were the cheapest of the available alternatives, but she knew that at these distances, even a gun guard with a Mini-14 would not miss.  
    She carried the hoe across her chest at military “port arms,” with her head up and eyes front.  She wanted to shoulder the hoe like a rifle of her own, and aim down the “barrel” at them, but that type of rebellious gesture would only earn her another stint in D-Camp’s rusty iron “sweat box,” where one could neither stand up nor fully lay down.
    Besides, she was consumed with curiosity about why Deputy Warden Linssen wanted her, and she would do nothing to jeopardize this meeting.
    ***
    At the edge of the field was the tool truck, a mud-splashed white full-size GMC pickup.  Ranya dropped her hoe into a plastic bin in the back, and the supervisor sitting in the cab made a notation in his ledger book. Beyond the tool truck, on the dirt road leading from the cornfield, was Warden Linssen’s black Ford Ranger.  The power window on the driver’s side rolled down as she approached.
    “Ranya? Get in.  You’re done with the weed line for today.  Maybe for forever.”  The warden was wearing wire-rimmed aviator’s sunglasses, and she smiled warmly through the open window.
    It was the first time Ranya had opened a vehicle door in five years. She had ridden in the backs of camp trucks on occasion, but never in the cab. The AC hit her with a forgotten alpine blast, pushing out the Oklahoma summer heat.  As she settled into the spongy seat, Ranya suddenly remembered riding in another pickup truck that mad September in Virginia, six years before.  Brad’s pickup truck.
    The deputy warden was wearing a crisp Internal Security Agency senior officer’s summer working uniform: black pants and a white short-sleeved dress shirt, with the ISA patches on the shoulders.  She was an attractive woman about forty, Ranya guessed, with short jet-black hair that was cut flat around the back to keep it the regulation length: just covering her collar, but no more.  Like the other senior ISA officers Ranya infrequently saw, she carried no sidearm. She was an administrator, and duty guns were beneath her station and pay grade.
    Linssen put her truck into gear and pulled out.  “You must be wondering what’s going on, right? Why I came for you?”  She was grinning, relishing her secret.
    “Am I getting out of D-Camp?”
    “No, no I’m afraid not.”  The warden sounded genuinely sympathetic. “But I do have good news for you, some very good news.  But let’s have lunch first, and get you cleaned up!  I think maybe I’m going to take you out of the fields and put you into admin.  If you want it—if you have the right attitude for it.”  She turned and smiled at Ranya again.
    The last time she had spoken in private at any length with Deputy Warden Starr Linssen had been in her office in the administration section of D-Camp.  Ranya had requested the meeting, after being beaten in her bunk by a group of male and female guards during one of her first nights in camp.  Ranya had forcibly resisted their brutal “seduction” attempts, biting and kicking at her attackers.
    During that initial meeting, Linssen had appeared sensitive to her plight, and Ranya was able to steer their conversation to the subject of her missing son. The warden had promised to seek out any available information about the child, if she could.  Her main concern was that Ranya “fit in,” and not invite further abuse by “antagonizing” the guards.  As if defending herself against sexual assault constituted antagonizing the guards! Nevertheless, the