House Divided

Book 2: Class H Trilogy

by Raul Ramos y Sanchez

Genres: Family Life

Synopsis

Once they had a country, a culture, a future. Today, upheaval and betrayal have turned their world upside down. And for one family-a U.S. war hero, his deeply religious wife, and their impressionable fourteen-year-old son-a new struggle has just begun. Mano Suarez made a choice to fight against injustice, and his wife can only pray for his deliverance. Now their son, Pedro, takes up his father's cause . . . disappearing into the ranks of a cult-like organization and leaving his family far behind. To rescue him, Mano must face the consequences of his past deeds. But how can he convince his son to give up the very ideals he, Mano, embraced? How can he prove that home and family are the most important ideals of all? HOUSE DIVIDED

Release date: January 28, 2011

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 321

Sample

THE MARCHA OFFENSIVE: DAY 2

Some things had not changed. The dawning sun in East Los Angeles was still a feeble glow in the gray haze. But the city’s infamous smog was no longer a residue of its endless traffic. These days, the smoke of cooking fires clouded the sky. The vehicles that had once clogged Los Angeles were now charred shells littering a war-scarred city divided into two walled-in Quarantine Zones.

A rooster crowed outside a white stucco cottage on the north side of Quarantine Zone B. Inside the small house, Manolo Suarez got out of bed and began to dress.

Lying naked on the bed, his wife, Rosa, yawned, stretching languidly. “What time is it, mi amor?” she murmured.

“Time for me to go, querida,” Mano answered, fastening his weathered jeans, his left forearm bandaged to the elbow.

Rosa sat up suddenly, her eyes flashing. “Where are you going?”

Lacing a scuffed brown boot, Mano looked up. “The less you know, the better it is for all of us, Rosa. I wouldn’t leave you if it wasn’t important.”

“We’ve been apart over a year, Mano,” she said, her long black hair still sleep-tangled. “Can’t someone else take your place—at least for today?”

Mano stopped dressing and stared at her somberly. “There’s no one else left.”

“I’m sorry, Mano. I understand,” Rosa said, the edge in her voice gone. Rising from the bed, she slipped on a tattered robe. “Will you have time to eat?”

“No, it’s nearly daylight,” Mano said walking toward the bedroom door. “I should have left an hour ago.”

Rosa stopped him in the doorway, putting her palm on his broad, muscled chest. “When will you be back?”

“When I can,” he said, looking into her dark brown eyes.

“Is this how our life is going to be, Mano?”

“This is a war now, querida. I wish it could be different.”

She sighed and embraced her husband. “At least we’re together again.”

Mano gave her a reassuring squeeze, then stepped away. “I have to go.”

“Wait. Come with me,” she said, taking her husband’s hand. “This won’t take long.”

Mano followed Rosa as she led him through the narrow hallway into the living room. On the couch, covered in a thin patched blanket, slept their son, Pedro. Rosa leaned toward the thirteen-year-old, reaching out to wake him.

Mano gently pulled her back. “Let him sleep,” he whispered.

“Doesn’t a son deserve to see his father?”

“Not now, querida,” he said softly. “I don’t have time.”

“Pedro was asleep when you got in last night,” she said, looking up at Mano, nearly a foot taller. “It’s been over a year since your son has seen you,” she added, her voice rising. “And when you leave, it may be the last time we—”

Rosa stopped as Pedro rolled over and opened his eyes. The boy stared glassy-eyed around the room for a moment before his gaze fixed on Mano. “Papi, is that you?”

Mano knelt by the couch and touched the boy’s cheek. “Yes, m’hijo.”

“Papi, Papi!” he called out, wrapping his arms around Mano’s thick neck. “I saw your name in the newspaper at the camp!” he said, his hoarse adolescent’s voice cracking with emotion. “The paper said you were a traitor but everybody in the camp thinks you’re a hero—except for the vendidos. But I told them—”

“Listen, Pedro,” Mano interrupted as he tenderly unwound the boy’s arms clinging to him. “I have to go now. It’s very important. We’ll have to talk later, okay?”

The boy’s smile faded. “It’s just like before,” he said, blinking back tears. “You never want to be with us.”

“No, m’hijo. That’s not it at all,” Mano answered, cupping the boy’s face in his large hands. “There are things I have to do… right away. I’ll be back as soon as I can. I promise.”

Pedro said nothing and turned away from his father.

Rosa wrapped her arms around the boy. “Go, Mano. We’ll be fine,” she said unconvincingly.

Mano rose and peered cautiously through the windows. “Stay inside today—both of you. I think the Baldies will be coming into the zones in strength,” he said, opening the front door.

“May God keep you, mi amor,” Rosa whispered, unheard by Mano as he closed the door behind him.

Once outside, Mano moved along the deserted street with a resolve born of necessity. He had nothing left to lose. If captured by the government, he would be sentenced to death under the Terrorist Arraignment Act. Passed five months earlier, the draconian bill most people called the “needle law” charged anyone supporting the insurgency with high treason. The punishment was death by lethal injection. Even Mano’s wife and son faced a similar fate for abetting an insurgent. Although he was happy to have Rosa and Pedro back after a year at the relocation camp, they were now in greater danger than ever. Mano shook his head, trying to clear his mind of the guilt. He had a more immediate crisis.

Yesterday’s nationwide offensive had been a disaster, derailed by a mole who’d alerted the government to the rebel attacks. A terrible question now plagued Mano: How much damage had the informer caused? Since leading a failed assault against an Army outpost yesterday morning, Mano had been cut off from news of the outside world. What little he knew was bad enough.

Guided by the mole, the Army had discovered the rebel command center in Los Angeles directing their widespread offensive. Mano had returned from his raid to find their communications equipment seized or destroyed and his comrades killed.

The sight of spent bullet casings on the street brought him back to the present. Most of the insurgency’s leaders across the continent were now out of touch or dead—and he did not have time for the luxury of grief. He was now the sole survivor of the rebel’s inner command in the area. The next few hours might decide the future of their cause. Turning onto Whittier Boulevard, Mano quickened his steps.

A quarter hour later, Mano approached a run-down duplex on Fraser Avenue. The man who lived inside was his last resort for help—Angel Sanchez, the leader of Los Verdugos, a street gang that had become the palace guards of the rebel leadership in Los Angeles.

Mano needed to see Angel right away—if he was still alive.



The armored vehicles raced through downtown Los Angeles stirring eddies of dust in the empty streets. As the convoy crossed the viaduct over the vacant Union Pacific rail yards, the voice of the column’s commander came on the radio.

“Tango Five to all units,” Captain Michael Fuller said. “Convoy halt.”

Moving in unison, the five vehicles rolled to a stop and Fuller emerged from the Humvee leading the column. Studying the road ahead through his binoculars, a tight smile formed on Fuller’s face. The rusting steel doors of the North Gate into the Quarantine Zone B were open, creating a glowing portal in the long, early-morning shadows cast by the ten-foot concrete wall topped with razor wire. So far, so good, Fuller thought with relief.

The North Gate was one of only two passages into the twenty-two square miles of Quarantine Zone B. Although a likely place for an ambush, Fuller was betting the rebels would not be lying in wait at the gate this morning.

Fuller climbed back into the Humvee and picked up the radio’s handset. “Tango Five to all units. Deploy in combat formation and proceed into the Quarantine Zone.”

The four tank-like Bradley Fighting Vehicles behind Fuller’s Humvee began moving into position at the head of the column. As the Bradleys lumbered past the Humvee, Fuller’s driver nervously stroked the blue figurine taped to the dashboard. “All right, Hefty,” he whispered to the grinning Smurf. “Pancho’s waiting for us inside. Get us through that gate, dude.”

“Don’t worry, Springs,” Fuller said to his driver. “Getting inside won’t be a problem.” Save up Hefty’s luck for later, Fuller kept to himself. We’re going to need it.



Angel Sanchez entered the living room of his duplex apartment cranking the dynamo on a shortwave radio. Shirtless, with crude tattoos covering his face and muscled torso, the gang leader was an imposing figure despite his short stature.

He handed the radio to Mano, who tuned it to the familiar setting for the BBC and placed it on one of the steel milk crates serving as chairs and coffee table in the sparsely furnished living room. Most wooden furniture in the Quarantine Zones had been burned for fuel, along with almost anything combustible.

Following a report on the London Stock Exchange, the dulcet-toned BBC announcer reached the news they’d been waiting to hear.

… and now our top news story: the widespread Hispanic insurgent attacks across the United States being called the Marcha Offensive… Mary Ann Kirby reports.

The scratchy quality of the female voice now on the air indicated her report had been recorded over a telephone line.

Yesterday, at precisely noon U.S. Eastern Time, Hispanic insurgents from California to Connecticut emerged from their walled-in barrios and stormed the military outposts guarding the forty-six Hispanic Quarantine Zones throughout the United States. Timed to match the rebel assaults, explosions rocked hundreds of communications and power facilities across the continent, destroying electrical relay stations, power lines, transformers, and vu-phone towers. Not since the American Civil War, over a century and a half earlier, has a conflict of this scale taken place on U.S. soil.

A body count released by the U.S. Army claims two hundred fifty-four insurgents were killed and seven captured during the attacks. U.S. Army losses were reported at eleven dead and wounded. Preliminary reports indicate fewer than thirty non-Hispanic civilians lost their lives, most as a result of auto accidents in the panic following the attacks. Despite the heavy rebel losses, the carefully coordinated attacks were a shocking psychological blow to the U.S. public.

At four thirty p.m. on the East Coast, President Carleton Brenner addressed a shaken nation. “The attacks are over. You are not in danger. Stay home and remain calm. While today’s terror attacks were unprecedented in scale, civilian casualties were minimal. The assaults on our military installations were courageously repelled. Our nation remains strong and secure.”

President Brenner’s speech stemmed the tide of panic. But the Marcha Offensive—launched on the birth date of the rebels’ patron saint, José Antonio Marcha—marks the start of a dark new era in U.S. history. According to Oxford expert on American studies Sir Bernard Spaulding, “The Balkanization of the United States now seems inevitable.”

This is Mary Ann Kirby reporting from New York.

Angel turned off the radio and faced Mano. The gang leader had understood much of the news despite his limited grasp of English. “Muchos muertos, eh?”

“Yes, a lot of dead,” Mano answered grim-faced. If the news report was accurate, they’d lost nearly half their fighters, many not much more than children.

“They die in fight or die like this,” Angel said, raising his tattooed arm and jabbing his finger into the crook of his elbow, mimicking an injection.

Mano closed his eyes and rubbed his temples, swamped by a wave of guilt. He was the architect of the Marcha Offensive; he had insisted their fighters attack military installations and not civilian targets. The price for avoiding the tactics of terrorists had been very high. At least only a few civilians died, he reminded himself. Still, like any guerrilla, his primary weapon against the military had been the element of surprise. The informer had robbed them of that advantage—and the Army would be quick to exploit their heavy losses.

“The Baldies will be coming, entiendes?” Mano said, rising to his feet. “We need to be ready.”

“Sí, Mano,” Angel replied, already striding toward the door. “I talk con mis vatos. They tell me when Baldies come.”



Captain Fuller leaned forward in the Humvee’s seat, scanning the rooftops visible over the Quarantine Zone wall for snipers. He was relieved—but not surprised—to find their entrance into the zone unopposed.

Most Army patrols entering the nation’s Quarantine Zones over the last year had suffered heavy losses. Michael Fuller, however, was determined to avoid that fate for the five vehicles and forty-three soldiers under his command. That’s why he’d chosen this time and place to enter. Still, the thirty-one-year-old captain had qualms about his decision. He was breaking an unwritten truce with the Panchos by launching an armored patrol into the zone during the Army’s weekly delivery of food.

Once inside the solid-steel doors, Fuller’s convoy skirted past a line of open-bed Army trucks loaded with sacks of cornmeal parked along the boulevard. Civilians in blue armbands were hastily transferring the sacks from the trucks into an odd assortment of vehicles, while a platoon of National Guardsmen stood warily nearby. The civilians stopped their work, staring hard at Fuller’s trespassing column.

From the rear bench of the Humvee, Lieutenant Gerald Case gazed expectantly out the window. “You think we’re going to see some action, Captain?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“C’mon, Cap. What’s wrong with stirring up a little firefight? I missed out on the action at the outpost yesterday. Acombat commendation would be a fast way out of this shithole.”

Case’s words stung Michael Fuller—mostly because they were true. A domestic assignment in today’s Army was for bottom-feeders. Overseas duty was the fast lane to promotion. “Stow it, Case. I’m not going to risk getting anybody hurt to help your career… or mine.”

“We ain’t likely to get anybody hurt with a platoon of Brads around, Cap,” Case said, nodding toward the four treaded vehicles trundling ahead of them. Each Bradley was armed with a turret-mounted 25mm chain gun and carried seven heavily armed troopers.

“What about civilians, Case? Don’t you think… Watch the kid, Springs!” Fuller yelled to his driver as a naked toddler wandered into the path of their vehicle. The screeching of the brakes brought the boy’s mother running into the street.

“Sorry, Captain,” Springs said, his face pale. “I didn’t see the kid. I guess I was looking out for the Panchos.”

Lieutenant Case sneered. “Wouldn’t have made much difference if you’d taken him out. They breed like rats,” he said as the boy’s mother swooped up the child and retreated into the doorway of a dingy apartment building. “Why we fight these people on one street and feed them on another one is beyond me, Cap.”

“If we starved the QZs, every person inside would be fighting against us, Case. Beans are a lot cheaper than bullets. And besides, it’s the right thing to do.”

“They teach you that kind of bleeding-heart crap at West Point, Captain?”

“Yeah, right after the mandatory class on the virtues of appeasement.”

Case stared at Fuller blankly. “Appeasement?”

“Never mind, Lieutenant. We don’t have the time right now.”

“Well, explain this for me, will you, Captain… How the hell did an Academy ring knocker like you wind up with this dead-end posting anyway?”

Fuller turned slowly toward Case. “Lieutenant, your mouth is going to get you in deep shit one of these days… possibly very soon.”

As their convoy drove deeper into the zone, Fuller silently cursed the politicians who’d hatched the Quarantine and Relocation Act—and then left the military to clean up their mess. At the core of the law was a new type of citizen: Class H—those who were Hispanic, married to a Hispanic, or had at least one grandparent of Hispanic origin. The Q&R Act called for the relocation of all Class H citizens to quell the ethnic violence sweeping the country.

Two years after the bill was enacted, most Americans now saw the attempt at the largest ethnic internment in the nation’s history as an epic failure.

The construction of new Relocation Communities for Class H citizens in North Dakota had been halted after the deaths of more than two thousand internees during the first winter. Meanwhile, the once-temporary Quarantine Zones—built around Hispanic urban enclaves to end the bloody street battles between vigilantes and Hispanics—had become rebel strongholds from which the Panchos launched strikes and then melted back into the civilian population.

Yesterday’s offensive by the Panchos had changed the game. Thanks to a government mole, they’d uncovered the operation’s command center—an abandoned Holiday Inn near the center of Los Angeles Quarantine Zone B. A Delta Force team arriving in two helicopters had wiped out the enemy personnel and hauled away all the rebel communications equipment the helos could hold before pulling out.Now the brass wanted a more thorough intelligence sweep of the Pancho command center and had created Fuller’s ad hoc task force to ferry an intel team to the rebelcommand center and let the G2 wonks snoop around. The mission was considered so important, Fuller had even been assigned an air surveillance drone—a first for a stateside unit.

From the touch screen on the Humvee’s dashboard, Fuller studied the drone’s-eye view of the road ahead. What he saw made the captain shiver under his flak vest despite the eighty-degree heat: A barricade of rubble and abandoned cars blocked all four lanes of Whittier Boulevard.

After nearly a year of duty in Southern California, Fuller had come to know the insurgents’ tactics well. He was sure the Panchos were watching every move his convoy made. No matter which detour he chose, the Panchos would likely have an ambush waiting.



From the second floor of a vacant office building, Angel peered through a gap in the boarded-up window. Three blocks ahead, the armored column was moving slowly toward the rebel barricade on Whittier. “Mira, Mano,” he said. “Baldies come.”

Pressing his six-foot-three frame against the window, Mano watched the Army convoy approach their roadblock. He’d heard about the patrol soon after it entered the zone—the volunteers from La Defensa Del Pueblo unloading the food trucks had alerted Angel. Mano had always believed the Army would exploit its food distribution for military advantage someday. The move could not have come at a worse time.

“See the little plane?” Mano said, pointing to the drone circling over the column.

Angel squinted into the gap between the boards. “Sí.”

“That’s the commander’s eyes. Keep your people out ofsight when you move around them.” Mano held out hispalm like a roof and made finger-walking gestures below it. “Use the storm sewers. Move inside buildings. Entiendes?”

“Sí. Entiendo. Baldies see from sky.”

A third-generation Mexican-American, Mano spoke only a handful of words in Spanish. Angel, who had slipped across the border four years earlier, spoke little English. Until her death yesterday, their translator had been Josefina Herrera. Now, facing the first tangible measure of her loss, the enormity of Jo’s death came flooding back to Mano.

When Jo had entered his life three years earlier, he’d been an out-of-work mechanic, one unemployment check away from eviction, desperate to provide for his family. Jo hired Mano, first as a mechanic for her recycling business, and later as security director for La Defensa Del Pueblo, a community organization she’d created in response to the outbreak of vigilante killings in East Los Angeles.

Jo had been more than a boss. She’d opened Mano’s eyesto the plight of their people. For a long time, he’d resisted two disturbing impulses: the pull of the Hispanic liberation movement and his attraction to Jo. Ultimately, the former U.S. Army Ranger’s loyalty to the United States had withered. His devotion to his wife had not. Shortly before her death defending their command center, Jo had used most of her remaining wealth to reunite Mano with his wife and son, interned in a Relocation Community in the Dakotas. That gesture had erased all of Mano’s lingering questions about Jo and their cause—and renewed his will to fight.

“How we fight Baldies?” Angel asked, breaking Mano’s reverie.

Mano rubbed his face and looked again at the line of vehicles now turning north around their barricade. “That’s a strong force,” he observed drily. “Muy fuerte.”

Angel curled his hands together as if strangling a neck. “I send vatos with RPG to Guirado Street,” he said.

“Yes, I know Guirado is a choke point. But we have very few people or weapons left, Angel. Muy poco hombres. Entiendes? We need more time to plan an attack. Mas tiempo,” Mano said, tapping the watch on his brawny forearm bandaged from the bullet that had grazed him yesterday.

Angel looked unblinkingly into the taller man’s eyes. “We no fight, more Baldies come.”

Mano nodded. “You’re right, but we can’t risk losing more men—or our RPGs. We need a better plan.” After yesterday’s disastrous raids, Angel’s eight men armed with four rocket-propelled grenade launchers was their only fighting team left intact.

Angel shrugged in disgust. “What we do?”

Mano rubbed his wispy beard. From his days as a Ranger, he knew the five-vehicle column was a formidable force—but still clearly a sortie into the zone. “Let’s wait and see where they’re going. Sooner or later, they’ll be leaving—and there are only two ways out.”

Angel nodded and smiled.



Half an hour after entering the zone, Fuller was surprised when his column reached the Holiday Inn unopposed. His respite was short-lived.

Shortly after setting up their defensive perimeter, civilians began gathering around the abandoned hotel, pressing against the crime scene tape left behind by the Delta Force team the day before. In less than an hour, several hundred men, women, and children surrounded Fuller’s position, staring in unnerving silence.

Fuller gazed into the crowd less than fifty paces away. He was sure there were Panchos staring back. How long this standoff would last was anybody’s guess.

“I don’t like this, Captain,” Lieutenant Case said nervously. “If one of these beaners has a bomb, all he has to do is walk through the tape and we’re chipped beef.”

“The Panchos haven’t used suicide bombers before, Case. I doubt they’re going to start now.”

“What if they charge us, sir? We’re outnumbered ten-to-one. I say we fire over their heads and scare them off, Captain.”

“Chill out, Case. The last thing we want to do right now is start shooting.”

Fuller had no fear of being overrun. He’d deployed his Bradleys in the hotel’s front and rear parking lots, forming two bases of fire that could easily mow down a charge from the crowd. His concern was for the innocent onlookers. If the spooks don’t finish up fast, this could turn into a bloodbath.

Standing among the crowd around the Holiday Inn, Mano studied the captain’s face, trying to read the man’s thoughts. The officer looked concerned but unafraid, coolly scanning the onlookers. It had been months since he’d been this close to a Baldie.

Could this be one of the men who killed my son?

Although it had been more than two years since Julio had been run down by a military convoy, the memory brought back a surge of anger. The incident had killed more than M. . .