Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista Read Free Page A

guards had kept a wary distance after that first unsuccessful attack, and Ranya gave the deputy warden some of the credit for that small mercy.
    A series of dirt road turns led to a cracked asphalt track, just inside the ten-foot-high razor wire topped perimeter fence.  The fence itself presented only a minor obstacle to escape.  The real control was exerted by the tiny chips implanted behind her left shoulder, just under her neck: Radio Frequency Identification Devices smaller than a grain of rice.  The RFID chips were used inside of the camp to control the movements of the detainees.  Every time they passed through a gate or numerous other portals, they were automatically counted to determine that they were where they should be at all times.
    Around and beyond the inner camp, sensor wires were buried in the ground, and other wires were strung along the many fences.  Any prisoner crossing a buried sensor wire, or approaching within a few feet of a fence, would trigger an alarm at central control.  Beyond D-Camp lay unknown miles of rural western Oklahoma: more fields stretching to the horizon, and probably more buried sensor wires.
    “Ranya, I hated seeing you turned out as a field worker. Hated it! But after your fight with the guards…  Anyway, I know about your background, your education.” The warden reached over for Ranya’s left wrist. “Let me feel your hand…ugh.  All callused, so rough...that’s no way to live!  But there’s no reason D-Camp has to be so bad, not all of it.  We have a saying: you scratch my back…and I’ll scratch yours, all right?” The warden squeezed her hand.
    Ranya said nothing, but withdrew her hand, glancing over at Linssen. The warden had a blue-black tattoo of a grinning quarter-moon visible on her neck, partly above her collar, and a matching sun-face on the opposite side.  Her white uniform collar always made them appear to be rising or setting. “Is the good news some word about my son?”
    “Ranya, you’ve been here for almost five years—let’s not rush things. Okay?”
    Linssen stopped at an open vehicle gate in another fence, which separated different areas of the former Army base containing D-Camp.  A few feet opposite an electric eye on a steel post, she held up an ID card against her side window to be scanned.  A guard stepped out of his cement blockhouse, gave them both a perfunctory look from a few steps away, and waved them on.  In five years, Ranya had never seen this area of the base. It was both unsettling and exhilarating.
    They drove past another vehicle gate in the chain link outer perimeter fence.  Beyond it to their left lay a two-lane blacktop road, heading south into the distance across endless fields.  It was impossible for Ranya to know if the road she saw lay inside or entirely beyond the boundaries of the old military base.  The gate itself led into a tractor-trailer-sized double box of chain link fence, all topped with razor wire.  Any vehicles leaving the base through it would have to stop inside the steel rectangle for inspection, before the outer gates were opened.
    The pickup continued on into an area of trees and white-painted wooden structures, warehouses mainly, parts of what seemed to be an abandoned military supply depot.  Warden Linssen made another turn into the interior of the base and in a few minutes, they arrived at what appeared to be a small suburban enclave, complete with sidewalks, lawns and shade trees.
    “Home sweet home, Ranya.  It was married officers’ housing, back in the Army days.  Pretty nice, eh? We can have lunch, and talk.  I’m sure you’ll enjoy some fresh fruit.”
    Linssen didn’t seem concerned about her own personal security, or any escape risk presented by Ranya.  She evidently believed the implanted chips made escape impossible.  The white clapboard ranch-style house had an old-fashioned key lock in the front door.  Linssen opened the door for Ranya and followed her inside,