Edge of Battle aow-2

by Dale Brown

  “What you want is being debated in Congress as we speak, Minister.”

  “It has been debated for far too long—and as it is being debated, our citizens are dying in your deserts, being cheated out of fair wages, being denied workers benefits, and are not allowed to even open a bank account or see a doctor in some areas,” Díaz said. “That must stop immediately, Mr. President. Otherwise I think our people should do exactly what Mr. Fuerza recommends: for their own safety, they should get out of the United States and not return until things change.”

  “Minister Díaz, millions of your people will suffer if they just leave like this,” Conrad said. “Already thousands of innocent persons, mostly Mexicans, have been injured by assaults, traffic accidents, bombings, fighting, and looting. Several hundred have been killed. In the meantime they have no jobs, no income, and have only succeeded in creating chaos, fear, and confusion. Many of your people have been accused of hate crimes, racial attacks, sabotage, vandalism, and even murder. Is this what you want?”

  “Mexico wants only justice, equality, and freedom, Mr. President,” Díaz said. “What happens in the streets of your city and in your halls of Congress is entirely up to you. I suggest you control the hatemongers and racists in your own country first, like Bob O’Rourke, before accusing the poor displaced persons from Mexico!”

  “Bob O’Rourke was killed early this afternoon, Minister Díaz, by a powerful bomb planted in his car,” the President said. “I assumed you were aware of this.”

  Díaz was silent for a long moment, then: “If you expected me to be sorry O’Rourke is dead, Mr. President, I will no doubt disappoint you,” he said in a quieter tone. “It matters not. He was not a spokesman for your government, anymore than Comandante Veracruz is of ours. Prod your Congress into passing some real immigration reform legislation, and sign it into law immediately, or the blood of many more innocent hardworking people will be on your hands.”

  President Conrad was silent for a few moments, then: “I understand that things are difficult there now, Minister Díaz,” he said. “I called to ask if the United States can do anything to help. President Maravilloso gave her permission for us to send the FBI and military investigators to your country to—”

  “I’m afraid that will be impossible now, Mr. President,” Díaz said. “As director of internal investigations in Mexico, I cannot spare the manpower to lend to American investigators while attempting to conduct our own investigation. The Council of Government, the legislature, and the people will not permit an American investigation to override our own.”

  “You don’t understand, Minister,” the President said. “The El Centro incident occurred on U.S. soil, involving American military and civilian personnel. The U.S. embassy is considered American soil. You have treaty obligations that permit us to bring in our own investigators in cases such as this. I demand your government’s full—”

  “Excuse me, sir?” Díaz interrupted, his voice fairly shaking with anger. “Did you just tell me that you ‘demand’ something? How dare you speak to me like this? You would never dare to tell even a pizza deliveryman in your country that you ‘demand’ something—I think you would be polite and ask instead. How dare you make demands of this government?”

  “Sir, a horrible crime has been committed on our territory,” President Conrad said. “The FBI is our chief federal investigation organization. Because the incident involved a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter, the Department of Defense and the Navy are also going to be involved, along with other agencies. The aircraft that attacked near El Centro came from Mexico—you admitted as much yourself. Now I expect…no, Minister, I demand that your government cooperate with the FBI and the Navy Judge Advocate General’s investigation. You will also—”

  “Mr. Conrad, Mexico has its own investigation to conduct,” Díaz retorted. “As I recall, no Mexican investigators were allowed on U.S. soil to look into the deaths of Mexican citizens at the hands of your military at Rampart One for several days, until your so-called investigators had a chance to sanitize the crime scenes so no useful evidence could be collected by our Border Affairs investigators…”

  “Are you accusing the United States of destroying evidence in a criminal investigation?”

  “I am telling you, Mr. Conrad, that Mexico does not, nor probably ever will, know the true reason for the deaths of our citizens at the hands of the robot working on behalf of Operation Rampart, and that is because of the unreasonable and illegal demands you placed on us,” Díaz responded bitterly. “We were not allowed to investigate or question witnesses for almost three days after the incident occurred. Now you expect Mexico to not only allow your FBI and Navy to accompany our investigators, but you demand that they take over our investigation, dismissing all Mexican law enforcement agencies like some third-rate circus-clown act? I think not!”

  “Minister Díaz, I certainly did not—”

  “Mr. Conrad, the Foreign Ministry here has requested permission from your Department of State to allow me free diplomatic travel within the United States, specifically to address the United Nations Security Council to air my country’s grievances concerning your arming of the border, illegal detainment of Mexican citizens, and acts of violence against Mexican citizens,” Díaz said. “I have not received the courtesy of a reply, which I find very disturbing. Is it your intention to deny me entrance into your country and full diplomatic privileges?”

  “Of course not—not at this time,” the President replied. “Mexico is not on our list of sponsors of terrorism—although if the situation worsens or if we receive additional information concerning your government’s involvement in terrorist acts in the United States, that could change.”

  “That sounds like a threat, Conrad,” Díaz said. “Are you threatening me, Mr. Conrad? Are you trying to bully me into actions contrary to my government’s policies and laws?”

  “I’m stating facts, Minister Díaz,” the President said. “I will confer with the Secretary of State and inquire on your application, and I see no reason at this time for there to be any undue delays. But the United States does not allow heads of governments that sponsor terrorism to enter the United States.”

  “I hope you are prepared for substantial international condemnation if you refuse to allow me to address the United Nations in New York,” Díaz said angrily. “I hope your surprising lack of judgment and consideration is caused by grief and confusion over the recent violence, Mr. Conrad, and not by some new confrontational and racist policy toward the United Mexican States. Think carefully before you act on these hateful impulses or faulty paranoid advice from your neoconservative, warmongering advisers.”

  “I will take your advice under careful advisement, Minister,” President Conrad said. “In the meantime, I have a possible solution for all those Mexican citizens who might wish to return to the United States.”

  “Oh?”

  “We have developed an identification technology that is simple, unobtrusive, accurate, and reliable,” the President said. “Within a matter of weeks it can be ready for mass implementation. It will provide thousands of citizens with an identification code that can be used by immigration and law enforcement personnel to determine any person’s identity.”

  “We already have identification cards, Mr. Conrad.”

  “This is not a card—it is a pill that a person swallows. The pill…”

  “Did you say, a pill?”

  “…releases thousands of tiny nanotransceivers in the body that transmit a coded signal when interrogated. The coded signal can be matched with official identification documents to—”

  “Are you suggesting that our people swallow a radio beacon that reports their location to authorities twenty-four hours a day?” Díaz asked incredulously. “This is the most insane and intrusive idea that I have ever heard!”

  “It sounds radical, I know,” the President said, “but the devices are completely harmless—”

  “You are crazy, Mr. Conrad! I could never rec
ommend that the citizens of my country ever participate in such an outlandish—!”

  “Minister Díaz, I am proposing that each Mexican citizen who wishes to return to the United States may be allowed to simply walk back into this country and return to his or her job and home simply by providing a Mexican identity card and swallowing a NIS pill—”

  “‘Nice?’ That is what you call this…this Big Brother eavesdropping monstrosity?”

  “The presence of the identification code proves that the individual has chosen to obey the law and respect our borders and security obligations,” the President said. “The NIS system will reduce the time it will take to identify individuals eligible for guest worker status: anyone with the code can stay and participate in a guest worker program; anyone not having such a code will be detained. It is a fair, unobtrusive, and easy solution…”

  “This is no solution at all—it is a gross marginalization of a human being’s basic right to freedom and privacy!” Felix Díaz retorted. “Do you actually expect that this so-called ‘Nice’ program will replace serious and equitable negotiations between our nations for a resolution to this crisis, or do you expect to just dictate that this otherworldly, Draconian abomination be implemented?” He did not give President Conrad a chance to respond. “You may call me when you have a serious solution to discuss, sir. Good day to you.” And the connection was terminated with a loud Crraack!

  The President returned the handset to its cradle and sat back in his chair, looking out the window. “Well, the NIS idea went over like a lead balloon,” he said morosely. “But as I was explaining it to Díaz, it started to sound better and better to me.”

  “It will never fly, sir,” Chief of Staff Thomas Kinsly said. “It’s a crazy idea anyway—I would be surprised if anyone in Mexico was even the least bit interested in the idea. But what about Díaz, sir? Did it sound like he’s in charge now?”

  “Absolutely,” the President said. “Felix Díaz definitely sounds like he’s taken over—he hardly mentioned Maravilloso and anyone else in the government, as if they never even existed. Jeez, I thought Maravilloso was a bomb thrower—Díaz has got her beat ten ways to Sunday.” He turned to Kinsly and asked, “What do we know about Díaz, Tom?”

  “Felix Díaz is a major player—very wealthy, very popular, very politically connected, hawkish, an obvious front-runner for president in their next elections,” Kinsly said. “The rumors are that he and Maravilloso have been carrying on with each other for a few months—right in the presidential palace too, I hear.

  “The Internal Affairs Ministry is one of the most important and far-reaching in the Mexican government, and Felix Díaz is a hands-on, knowledgeable administrator,” Kinsly went on. “He controls the intelligence apparatus, the border patrols, the antidrug bureaus, the federal police, and all domestic investigations—almost everything except foreign affairs, the courts, and the military, and he probably has a big hand in those as well. The Ministry of Internal Affairs is almost as well-equipped as the military, especially along the border.”

  “I need information on the situation out there,” the President demanded. “I need to find out if Díaz has staged a coup and what we’re up against.”

  “We don’t have a functioning embassy in Mexico City that can help us go find out information for us, sir,” National Security Adviser Ray Jefferson said, “so we’re going to have to rely on technical and human intelligence to get information, which will take time. But if these attacks by Mexican émigrés are being supported or even organized by Felix Díaz, and he’s now in charge of the government, we could be looking at a long, protracted, and deadly ongoing insurgency against the United States—perhaps even a guerrilla war.”

  The President’s head shot up as if a gun had been fired in the Oval Office, but the Chief of Staff was the first to retort: “Sergeant Major, as usual, you’re overreacting to recent developments. What could his motive possibly be?”

  “Exactly what’s happening, Mr. Kinsly: chaos, pandemonium, hatred, distrust, confusion, fear, and violence,” Jefferson said. “An insurgency forces the issue of immigration reform—more accurately, immigration liberalization—onto the front burner.”

  “How? What’s he hoping to gain?”

  “Do you think, Mr. Kinsly, that Congress is likely to enact any legislation that will curb immigration now, with thousands of Mexican workers leaving the country every day?” Jefferson asked. “Folks won’t focus on the violence—in fact, I would think more folks would likely blame the U.S. government for causing the violence with our ‘radical’ border security measures. Proimmigration reform measures will be seen as the way to stop the violence and get everyone’s lives back to normal. The more restrictive or onerous the rules and requirements for establishing the right to work, deportation, pay, benefits, and citizenship, the more the people and Congress will oppose it. All attempts at meaningful border security and illegal immigration control will be pushed aside.”

  “That’s crazy,” Kinsly said. “You can’t possibly believe that Mexico is purposely encouraging people to attack the United States in order to force a resolution to the illegal immigration situation?”

  “No, Mr. Kinsly—I’m suggesting that forces within the Mexican government, possibly aided by the Consortium and also by radical leaders like Ernesto Fuerza, are staging violent attacks against the United States in order to incite their people to react against the United States, whether by violence or simply by leaving their jobs and heading south,” Jefferson responded. “There could be other reasons as well—political, financial, criminal, even public relations—but by doing what they’re doing, they are forcing the United States to expend a lot of political, financial, and military resources on this issue. I don’t know if the Mexican government is assisting the insurgents, but they don’t have to—all they need do is play along. Whatever they’re doing, Mr. Kinsly, it’s working.”

  “I’m still not buying it, Sergeant Major,” Kinsly said. At that moment the phone rang. Kinsly picked it up, listened…and groaned audibly. “A suspected terrorist attack at a university north of Los Angeles,” he said after he replaced the receiver. “Possibly a truck bomb outside an engineering building. L.A. County sheriffs and California Highway Patrol bomb squads are on it.” The President said nothing, the National Security Adviser noticed, as if suspected terrorist truck bombs were as common as traffic accidents nowadays. But that’s what the world had come to, he thought ruefully: if it wasn’t bigger than Nine-Eleven, the Consortium attacks on Houston, or the floods in New Orleans, it hardly registered on the White House’s radarscope anymore.

  At that moment Ray Jefferson’s wireless PDA beeped. Knowing that only an extremely urgent message would have gotten through to him while in a meeting at the Oval Office, he pulled the device from his jacket pocket and activated it. He read quickly, his face falling; moments later, a look of astonishment swept across his face. “I have an update on that situation at the university, Mr. President,” he said, shaking his head in amazement, “and you are not going to believe it.”

  CHAPTER 12

  OVER SOUTHERN ARIZONA

  THE NEXT EVENING

  The target was more than eleven hundred miles ahead—almost six hours of one-way flying.

  The aircraft made their last refueling over U.S. territory from an MC-130P Combat Shadow aerial refueling tanker low over the Sulphur Springs Valley area of south-central Arizona just before going across the border around 9 P.M. local time. Flying at less than five hundred feet aboveground, the aircraft were still spotted by U.S. Homeland Security antismuggling radar arrays and balloons, but the word had already been passed along, and no radio contact with the aircraft was ever made or even attempted.

  After refueling, the two aircraft flew in close formation, with the pilots using night vision goggles to see each other at night. Each aircraft was fitted with special infrared position lights that were only visible to those wearing NVGs, so from the pilots’ point of view it was very much like f
lying in hazy daytime weather conditions. The pilots of each aircraft would trade positions occasionally to avoid fatigue, with the copilot of one aircraft taking over and then moving over to the other aircraft’s opposite wing. The two propeller-driven aircraft were fairly well matched in performance, with the smaller aircraft having a slight disadvantage over its four-engined leader but still able to keep up easily enough. Throughout all the position and pilot changes, and no matter the outside conditions, the aircraft never strayed farther than a wingspan’s distance from each other and never flew higher than eight hundred feet aboveground.

  Mexican surveillance radar at Ciudad Juárez spotted the aircraft briefly near the town of Janos as it made its way southeast, and one attempt was made to contact it by radio, but there was no response so the radar operators ignored it. The Mexican military was tasked primarily with counterinsurgency operations and secondarily with narcotics interdiction—and even that mission ranked a very distant second—but those forces were primarily arrayed along the southern border and coastlines: in northern Mexico near the U.S. border, there was virtually no military presence at all. Certainly if a low-flying plane was spotted going south, it was no cause for alarm. A routine report was sent up the line to Mexican air defense headquarters in Mexico City, and the contact immediately forgotten.

  From Janos the aircraft headed south over the northern portion of the Sierra Madre Occidental Mountains. The aircraft flew higher, now a thousand feet aboveground, but in the mountains it was effectively invisible to radar sweeps from Hermosillo, Chihuahua, and Ciudad Obregón. Over the mining town of Urique, the aircraft veered southeast, staying in the “military crest” of the mountain range to completely lose itself in the radar ground clutter. This two-hour leg was the quietest—central Mexico was almost devoid of any population centers at all, and had virtually no military presence. They received the briefest squeak from their radar warning receivers when passing within a hundred miles of Mazatlán’s approach radar, but they were well out of range and undetectable at their altitude.