The Last Line

by Anthony Shaffer

  From behind the bed, Dominique cut loose with three fast shots, the noise muffled somewhat by the suppressor but loud enough to wake the neighbors if the .45 hadn’t done that already. At least three figures were down now in the doorway, two of them still moving. Teller fired again into the tangle—and then the fire escape window at his back exploded inward, and something struck him, hard, in the ribs. The blow knocked him forward and down, but he managed to hold on to his pistol as he fell, turning, firing at a half-glimpsed shadow on the fire escape outside. Dominique turned as well, firing through shattering glass until the shadow outside folded and dropped.

  “Chris! Are you okay?”

  Rising to his feet, Teller reached around to his back, high up, just beneath his right shoulder blade. His hand came away slick with blood, and it hurt to breathe.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “Just nicked.”

  Dominique picked her way through the shattered glass, pistol ready.

  “Watch out, don’t cut yourself,” he said. He picked up her shoes and handed them to her, then found his own. There was glass everywhere, and he shook a couple of shards from his left shoe before slipping it on.

  “I think this one’s dead,” she said, coming back from the window. “Looks like a 12-gauge. Here, let me see your back.”

  “No time. Get your coat. We’re out of here.” He could hear shouts and loud voices from elsewhere in the building. Even in this part of town, a gunfight inside a hotel was going to bring the police, and quickly. A moment later, a fire alarm went off with a harsh, angry bray, sounding over and over again. Someone had pulled an emergency alarm to evacuate the hotel.

  Teller took time to find his pants, pull them on, then fish the cell phone from his pocket. He made his way across to the room’s inside door, stooping to examine the three bodies there.

  Correction—one KIA and two wounded. One of the wounded was unconscious and wouldn’t last much longer; one round had gone through his left lung, the wound bubbling and whistling. The other was whimpering, curled into a fetal position with his hands laced over his belly, blood pooling beneath him. Neither of the wounded men was paying attention to Teller. Quickly, Teller pulled the wallets from all three.

  He found cell phones in their pockets. Jackpot!

  Teller also found an unopened pack of cigarettes in the dead man’s shirt pocket. Quickly, he stripped off the cellophane and used it to cover the sucking chest wound on the first wounded gunman. He retrieved a pillowcase from the bed and used that to pack the other’s belly wound. That ought to hold them until an ambulance arrived.

  He then jacked a connection cable from his cell phone to one of the others and punched in a four-digit code. The question was how long it would take the virus to load into the target phone.

  It took less than five minutes for Dominique and Teller both to get dressed and collect their things. Teller went to the fire escape and looked down into the hotel parking lot.

  “No one down there,” he told Dominique. “If these four have backup, they’ll be waiting for us either in the lobby or right outside the front entrance. We’ll go down this way.”

  Teller went back to the door and checked the progress of his download. It was still going. Damn. They couldn’t wait much longer. If the police didn’t show up, curious hotel guests or management might—though chances were they would be cautious after hearing gunfire.

  Dominique took a sheet from the bed and wrapped it around her hand, using it to smash broken glass from the window frame, clearing the way for their escape.

  “We’re good to go,” she said. She nodded at the tangle of bodies on the floor. “You think those two will make it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Why’d you help them? They’re bloodthirsty murderers.”

  He shrugged, still watching the phone download in process. “They’re also human beings. Drowning in your own blood is a horrible way to die.”

  Ten minutes. Come on come on come on …

  A light winked green on the display of his cell phone. Swiftly, he unjacked the cable, pocketed it and his phone, and slipped the other phone back into the pocket of the gut-shot gunman.

  “Let’s go,” he told her. “I’ll go first and check it out.”

  He wanted to make sure that someone wasn’t down there in the parking lot, hidden out of sight, watching that window. He took a moment to check the body on the fire escape platform—dead with a round through his forehead—then clattered down the extended fire escape ladder without attracting any attention that he could see, though the wound in his back shrieked at him as he moved. Dominique was right behind him. “Where now?” she asked, coming up against him.

  “Downtown,” he decided. “My hotel. It’s only a few miles.”

  “Well, I must say you certainly know how to show a girl a good time.”

  “Hey, that’s me,” he said, grinning. “Una calavera real.”

  The rain had stopped, though the streets and sidewalks were still wet. Two police cars, sirens ululating, pulled in at the front of the hotel, followed closely by an ambulance.

  A crowd had already gathered out front, mostly hotel guests, to judge by the range of undress and dishabille—underwear, negligees, and even blankets pulled over shoulders.

  Teller took Dominique’s arm, and they began strolling north toward the city center.

  OVAL OFFICE

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  0905 HOURS, EDT

  “Good morning, Mr. President.”

  “Randy.”

  “I have the report you wanted.”

  “Thank you.” The president looked up from what he was reading, then leaned back in his office chair. He looked exhausted, gray, old.

  Well, it had been that kind of week.

  “In two hours,” the president said, “I have a meeting with the UN ambassador. He’s going to tell me all about a resolution proposed by Mexico, UN Security Council Resolution 2855. What the hell am I going to tell him?”

  Randy Preston glanced around the office. The two men were alone for the moment. A large flat-screen television monitor was on against one of the walls, the sound low but still audible. It was tuned to CNN and was running coverage of the continuing riots in Los Angeles as well as, since yesterday, in Phoenix, San Antonio, El Paso, and Chicago.

  “I’m afraid, Mr. President, that there may be nothing you can say. Nothing we can do.”

  “The hell there isn’t. If the Security Council tries to pass such a resolution, I shall order our ambassador to veto it.”

  “That might buy us some time, sir,” Preston said, “but we may well be up against the inevitability of history.”

  “Fuck history. I will not be known as the president who gave away half of California and Texas!”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  “UN resolutions are not binding!”

  “No, sir.”

  “You’re my national security adviser. Give me some advice I can use!”

  Preston shrugged. “I would suggest that you agree to study the situation, to give the resolution due consideration, and promise to respect the rights and aspirations of citizens in those states. You might also give thought to pulling back the National Guard. That battle in East Los Angeles last night—that was bad. Made us look bad.”

  “Those troops are in there to restore order. They’re not coming out until order has been restored.”

  “Yes, sir. But keep in mind how much this looks like the Arab Spring.”

  “This has nothing to do with the goddamn Arabs!”

  “Maybe not, sir. But to the world at large, it looks exactly the same.”

  In December of 2010, popular demonstrations led swiftly to the overthrow of the government in Tunisia. Protests in Algeria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other nations in the region resulted in various government concessions. By early February of 2011, full-scale revolt had broken out in Egypt, leading eventually to the ousting, arrest, and prosecution of Hosni Mubara
k and two prime ministers, and a general takeover of the country by the military that was still being protested. Yemen and Bahrain faced serious public disorder, and Gaddafi’s forty-two-year dictatorship in Libya had at last come to an end in all-out civil war.

  “Egypt, Libya, and Syria,” Preston said. “Those were the worst—revolution or civil war. In each case, there were instances of soldiers firing into crowds of civilians. Thousands died, and there was a world outcry, with demands for intervention by the UN or by NATO.”

  The president stared hard at Preston. “Surely you’re not suggesting that we’re going to be attacked by NATO.”

  “I’m saying, Mr. President, that American police and army personnel have fired on demonstrating civilians in Los Angeles and other American cities. Right now, our allies in Europe see that as the exact moral equivalent with Gaddafi’s African mercenary snipers killing civilians in Tripoli, or al-Assad’s butchers machine-gunning protestors in Damascus and Daraa. They see us as having supported a NATO offensive against the Libyan government to ostensibly protect endangered civilians.

  “They’ll likely ask what can be done to protect American civilians in an identical situation.”

  “The situations are not identical, damn it. This … this Aztlanista movement is threatening to cut up our southwestern states to create a whole new goddamn country, by force if necessary! This will not stand!”

  Although the text had not yet been released, Resolution 2855 was expected to call for a popular referendum within the southern portions of several states in the U.S. Southwest, under UN oversight, with an eye toward creating a new and independent country. The newborn nation, popularly known as Aztlán, would be carved out of the southern halves of California, New Mexico, Arizona—the new border roughly running along the 35th parallel—and the southern quarter of Texas, more or less along the 30th parallel. Such a division, if it actually came to pass, would abruptly change the nationality of roughly thirty million citizens of the United States.

  “I will not be known as the president who presided over the dismemberment of this country.”

  Preston looked at him with something strangely akin to affection. In fact, he hated the man, but the president was so arrogant, self-serving, politically motivated, narcissistic, and so damned predictable that manipulating him scarcely offered any challenge at all. Just wind him up and point him in the right direction.

  To be fair, the political system in the United States had been teetering on the brink for a long time. Money ran the country, not the people, not democracy. The president had inherited a hell of a mess from his predecessors—as all presidents do—and no man was good enough, strong enough, or smart enough to keep the whole chaotic, jury-rigged structure from crumbling. Few people knew it yet, but the United States of America was in very serious trouble. The final collapse had already begun, and it was accelerating.

  Exactly what Preston and the other members of the Project had been aware of for some time.

  “Mr. President,” Preston said, picking his words carefully, “the Aztlanistas don’t stand a chance. We all know that. Hispanics are, what? Thirty-eight percent of the populations of California and Texas? Less than that in Arizona and New Mexico. They are in the strong majority in the southern portions of those states, of course, but there is no constitutional provision for letting only part of a state vote on an issue like this. If there was a vote tomorrow, the referendum would easily be defeated, with or without the UN getting involved.”

  “Damned straight.” The president seemed to relax somewhat. “And most Hispanics know they’ve got it good in this country. Even the illegals are better off than they’d be if the states they’re living in broke away and became a fucking third-world country!”

  “Exactly, sir.” Preston knew that one of the biggest problems the Aztlanistas faced was the fact that only a small percentage of all Hispanics in the United States actually supported them. Lopez and his bunch were noisy, but they didn’t speak for all Mexican immigrants. Yet.

  “But it’s the idea of the thing, of the UN meddling in our internal affairs!”

  “Yes, sir.” Preston didn’t need to add that the cold fact of the matter was that ever since the United States had become the world’s sole remaining superpower, the country’s relationship with the United Nations had gone from bad to abysmal.

  “There was that call for the UN to intervene in the 2012 elections,” the president said. “Remember that? They do not have that right!”

  “Of course not, sir. However, Resolution 2855 is going to make us look bad, very bad, just by coming up for a Security Council vote. It’s going to be a public relations disaster for us, and we’re going to need to dig to put a good spin on it.”

  The UN Security Council was a fifteen-member group charged, under the UN Charter, with “responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.” Five members were permanent: the United States, the Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China, France, and the United Kingdom, each of which had veto power. Resolutions were nonbinding, but could become binding if they were made under Chapter VII of the UN Charter—“Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression.” A vote by nine of the fifteen members was needed to affirm a given resolution.

  “And how do we put a ‘good spin’ on something like this?”

  “We’ve weathered worse, Mr. President. Careful handling of the news media. A lot of political maneuvering behind the scenes, backroom deals, that sort of thing. Some judicious arm-twisting, if necessary. If we threaten to pull out of the UN—or even just threaten not to pay our arrears up there—they’d cave pretty quickly.”

  The United States had withheld payments to the UN before in order to shape its foreign policies. Currently, the back-owed bill amounted to well over a billion dollars.

  The president picked up a pen and scribbled on a notepad in front of him. “I like that.”

  “But I recommend that you not threaten to do that yet, not at your meeting with the ambassador. Just have him suggest that we’re looking at ways to contain the violence, including pulling out the troops. See if he can delay a vote.”

  “I will not pull out the troops, Randy. Not when the only alternative is complete anarchy.”

  Preston nodded. “No, sir. You asked for my advice, and I’ve given it. I should remind you, though, both the Russians and the Chinese have already publicly compared us to Syria.”

  “Damn it, Randy,” the president said, “this is outrageous! The United States of America is not going to quietly go along with this! I will not give in to these … these rabble-rousers!”

  “I agree, sir, if we can do so without murdering our own people.”

  Something that, Preston knew, was already a foregone conclusion.

  Chapter Ten

  HOTEL HILTON

  CIUDAD DE MÉXICO

  REPÚBLICA DE MÉXICO

  0950 HOURS, LOCAL TIME

  18 APRIL

  “We’ve got some data back on those credit card numbers you picked up,” Chavez told Teller. “I think you’ll both be interested in this.”

  At 3:00 A.M., Teller had woken Procario up with a phone call and had him come pick them up. His back was hurting, the streets of Mexico City were dangerous at night, and he didn’t want to get dragged into any more firefights. By a little past three thirty, the two of them had been back in the two-room suite at the Azueta Hilton, filling in Chavez and Procario on the evening’s events. Chavez had uploaded the credit card numbers over the satellite link back to Langley and checked with Operations to see if the Cellmap intel was coming through yet.

  Teller and Dominique had hit the sack before an answer had come back. They’d slept—just slept—until well past eight.

  It had been a long night.

  Awake again, they’d joined Procario and Chavez in the other room. “Let’s see it,” Teller said.

  Procario had set up a laptop computer on the desk and had just fin
ished downloading pages of text from Langley. The information showed recent purchases for all of the men.

  “This is Carlos Gutierrez Sandoval,” he said, pointing, “late of Nogales.”

  “The guy from the van who had all the money in his wallet,” Teller said.

  “That’s him. Seems he was a big spender. He ran up over thirty thousand pesos’ worth on that card in the last week alone. Clothes … jewelry … and until two days ago, he was spending it all in Chetumal and in Corozal.”

  “Chetumal? Where the hell’s that?”

  “Corozal is in Belize, isn’t it?” Dominique asked.

  “Have a look,” Chavez said, calling up Google Earth on the screen and zooming in toward the eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula.

  Yucatán thrusts almost four hundred miles due north into the Gulf of Mexico, tropical and low-lying enough that most of it is cloaked in jungle. The western and northern portions of the peninsula belong to Mexico. South is Guatemala, while a narrow, rectangular strip of the southeastern coast is occupied by the tiny nation of Belize.

  “Chetumal is right here,” Chavez said, pointing at the screen to a spot on the eastern Yucatán coast halfway down the peninsula. “It’s in Mexico, on the mouth of the Rio Hondo and smack on the border with Belize.” His finger tracked south. “Corozal is nine miles south, in Belize, right here.”

  The coastal region there, Teller noted, was actually a sheltered inland waterway, the Bahía de Chetumal, an arm of pale blue sea around ten to fifteen miles wide and zigzagging from north to south. Those two towns actually lay on the western shore of the bay, cut off from the darker ocean almost forty miles to the east by a south-jutting peninsula—Costa Maya, the Maya Coast—and by Ambergris Caye, a slender island more than twenty miles long reaching toward the south. Beyond that, farther south still, a broken barrier of small cays stretched from Ambergris Caye almost all the way to Belize City. Chetumal Bay, isolated from the ocean, was cloaked in jungle and possessed numerous inlets, lagoons, and coves, plenty of places where a ship might disappear.