Drone (34 page)

ARGUS-IS was an ideal surveillance platform for battlefield commanders, but civil libertarians in the United States claimed that such “persistent stare” capabilities were the equivalent of warrantless searches of private individuals. Ashley deployed ARGUS-IS over her U.S. targets anyway because Lancet had drafted an executive order exonerating Drone Command from any such legal liabilities should the issue arise.

With the proven ARGUS-IS system in place, Ashley decided to experiment with two other systems. She paired the new Stalker drones that, in theory, could stay aloft forever by means of an electric battery that was
recharged by either a ground-based or air-based laser, to the new Hitachi camera facial-recognition systems, capable of scanning 36 million biometric faces per second—equal to the entire population of Canada. A perfect combination for finding their target needles in human haystacks.

Ashley even managed to borrow one of NASA’s repurposed RQ-4 Global Hawks. With a range of over eight thousand miles and an integrated sensor suite of infrared, optical, and radar systems, the Global Hawk could provide reliable high-altitude surveillance capacity if needed.

All the data collected by these various systems would be bounced off of satellites and then pumped into a specially designated terminal at the Utah Data Center, the NSA’s massive, multibillion-dollar data collection, storage, and processing facility near Bluffdale.

Ashley’s strike plans also fell into place rapidly. Radar-jamming UAVs would provide electronic cover in Mexican airspace if needed. She was confident that Drone Command would be ready to launch by the time Myers gave her the command to strike. Once the first attack was launched, Ashley and her team had just sixty days to complete the mission in the unlikely event that War Powers would be invoked by Congress and funding withdrawn for operations. Her personal goal was to complete the mission in twenty.

39

Washington, D.C.

On the morning of August 11, the White House communications director made a surprise announcement to the networks, notifying C-SPAN and the other news media outlets that President Myers was going to make a major policy address that evening at the unusual hour of 11 p.m. EST.

When asked what the announcement was, or why it was being held at such a late hour, the director replied, “No comment,” because she did not, in fact, have any idea what the speech was all about, which was highly unusual, and even more startling was the lack of a written transcript of the speech, which was typically provided several hours before any presidential broadcast so that both pundits and producers could prepare. Speculation was rampant.

Myers had been famously frustrated by the petty politics of state government as a governor, but that was high school locker room stuff compared to what one female senator termed “the jail shower free-for-all cocksmanship” that was Washington, D.C. Perhaps Myers was tired of the whole mess and craved the simplicity of just being the CEO of her own privately held firm, or so the speculation ran.

“Distracted” was the word most frequently used to describe her of late, but the frequency of use was due primarily to the fact that journalists were among the least original thinkers on the planet. The pseudopsychologists suggested that the death of her son had taken a deeper psychic
toll on her than she or anyone else had imagined and that she was entering into a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome. They further speculated that the stress of the office hadn’t given her the time to grieve, but they were unaware of the fact that Myers had refused to allow her grief to be televised for political gain.

Vice President Greyhill was on a trade mission in Toronto when he was asked by the Canadian media about the president’s announcement, and he also issued a “no comment.” That was because he, too, lacked any insight, and his own attempts to secure a private meeting or even a phone call with Myers were politely rebuffed by Jeffers. Greyhill wondered if the oil rig catastrophe had finally overwhelmed Myers and her staff. He’d long felt that the office was far above her limited capabilities and had raised that very issue in the primaries. She was an ingénue when it came to international politics, and practically a rube off the turnip truck when it came to the Beltway.

Greyhill had inherited both his father’s patrician good looks and his Senate seat, but it was his late mother’s Calvinist conviction that he was predestined for greatness that drove him. Why was he standing in a hotel room in Toronto instead of in the White House?

He should have won the primary. Greyhill was the first one to label Myers “the Ice Queen” for the pain and suffering her budget freeze proposal would cause.
Had caused,
he reminded himself. But his handlers—the same tired old cadre of overpaid political hacks perennially hired by the GOP establishment—had told him to remain “above the fray” and trust their messaging. Meanwhile, Myers’s upstart campaign ran a series of brilliant TV ads that showed her sitting around a kitchen table with a single mom, or a widow, or a young family and letting them talk about how they had to balance their checkbooks at the end of every month no matter how tough times got. “Why can’t Congress do the same?”
each of them asked at the end.
Why hadn’t his team thought of that?

Greyhill had run against the Democrats in the primary while Myers ran against Congress. Ironically, Greyhill counted many liberal
Democrat congressmen as his closest friends and colleagues, but he loathed Myers, never more so than now.

For the last several weeks Greyhill had been completely cut out of Myers’s inner circle and banished to the hinterland of international PR junkets, dignitaries’ funerals, and military base closings to get him away from her. He knew it was because she was hiding something from him. But what?

The banishment had sucked all of the juice out of him. He felt as dry and angry as old kindling. The secrecy of tonight’s speech fueled an irrational rage in him. Greyhill was determined to find a way to run Myers out of office before her term was up.

—

Senator Diele was forced to wait like the ordinary mortals to find out what Myers had in mind. He feigned a lack of interest to friends and colleagues during the day of the announcement, but when 10:59 p.m. rolled around, his keister was firmly planted on the leather sofa in his luxury suite at the Watergate Hotel, eyes fixed to his big-screen television.

Diele had been desperate to sway her to his way of thinking. He was a formidable ally and an unrelenting opponent. Like all congressmen, his reelection prospects hinged on what he could bring back home to his state, and like a dutiful milkman, he had been delivering the goods for over thirty years.

As any freshman political science major knew, the only way that every congressman could bring home the bacon was to be sure there were enough pigs at the trough to be slaughtered. Every Washington politician—liberal or conservative, urban or rural, Egyptian-American female or eighth-generation WASP—had the same goal: get reelected by giving their constituents whatever they wanted. Period. The cruel genius of the crushing national debt was that it was, in reality, the largest election campaign slush fund the world had ever seen. All of that borrowed money had one singular purpose: to keep incumbents in office. Every politician paid lip service
to the crippling effect the escalating debt would have on the future generations who would be the ones forced to pay it all back. But the brutal fact was that most incumbent politicians couldn’t care less about future generations because future generations couldn’t vote.

Congressional constituents were nearly as corrupt as their representatives. All of the voter hand-wringing about the deficit faded once they were confronted with the possibility that their own fat subsidy checks, cushy government jobs, generous federal contracts, or arcane university research grants could all go away if the deficit was reduced by a single penny. Spend less and somebody got less, and that made voters mad, and mad voters scared the hell out of politicians.

Diele was happy to navigate those tricky waters for Myers, but for a price, of course. His state was disproportionately more dependent upon government spending—particularly defense spending—than other states. If she had been willing to preserve his piece of the rice bowl rather than demanding that everyone sacrifice equally, he would have gone to the mattresses for her. But she was a stone-cold bitch and she could rot in hell as far as he was concerned.

Diele took another sip of his Scotch. He kept the talking news heads on mute. They were just rambling about what the speech might be about. Or more precisely, the airheads were reading aloud from the teleprompter the opinions of the real news writers who were expressing what they thought the president might be speaking about but who were too ugly to appear on camera themselves.

The news anchor then ran a clip of Myers at the oil rig platform. Diele had to admit, she was a good-looking woman, even in a hard hat.

40

Washington, D.C.

At precisely 11 p.m. EST, President Myers appeared on Diele’s television screen. She wore an elegant but understated blue business suit. An American flag was draped prominently behind her as she sat at her desk in the Oval Office. A bust of Teddy Roosevelt was also conspicuously displayed off to one side.

“Good evening, my fellow Americans. I’m addressing you tonight because of a number of recent developments that, taken together, pose a significant security threat to our nation. Beginning with the cross-border assault in El Paso and extending all the way to the Houston oil fire, it has become increasingly clear that the United States faces a new strategic threat. The question is, what exactly is the nature of that threat and how should we deal with it?

“As most of you realize, our country is still wrestling with the economic and physical effects of fighting the War on Terror for more than a decade. There are any number of arguments for or against that war, but no one can doubt the bravery and sacrifice of our men and women on the frontlines of the battlefield, many of whom paid the ultimate price to help secure our nation against another catastrophic attack by Islamist extremists. Thousands of our soldiers have died and tens of thousands have been wounded, physically and mentally, by a seemingly endless war that has cost our nation two trillion dollars to prosecute so far, and
perhaps another two to four trillion as we care for the brave men and women who have suffered for their service.

“I was elected, in part, to honor that sacrifice in blood and treasure, and to maintain constant vigilance against any future attacks by our enemies, but the American people have also made it clear that the era of sending American soldiers into battle in faraway lands is over. While we will always honor our treaty commitments with our allies, we are no longer willing to shoulder the primary defense burden for those who are capable of defending themselves.

“My administration is committed to what has been termed the Powell Doctrine, the tenets of which are well known. Is a vital national security interest threatened? Do we have a clear, attainable objective? Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed? Have all other nonviolent policy means been fully exhausted? Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement? Have the consequences of our action been fully considered?”

Myers’s face softened.

“Please forgive me for what must sound like another long-winded political speech. But it’s terribly important that I share with you my thoughts tonight and that we speak honestly with each other. It’s the failure to speak boldly and clearly about the challenges that face us that has brought our nation to the brink of economic and social disaster. With your help, and with the help of the courageous congressmen and senators from both parties who have joined with us, we’ve finally managed to begin to put our fiscal house in order. The budget freeze that’s been put in place is projected to slow the growth of federal spending and eventually balance the federal budget within ten years. It will require constant vigilance and iron-willed discipline to maintain the freeze, but no more vigilance or discipline than many of you have been forced to exercise as a result of the devastating job losses and wage reductions of the last decade.

“Every single mother trying to balance her checkbook, every small-business owner trying to stay in business, and every freshman college
student working a part-time job to pay for school knows that you can’t spend more than you take in without courting financial catastrophe. The fact that a generation of politicians has ignored this self-evident truth is one of the reasons our nation is in trouble. On that front, at least, we have made significant progress.”

—

Diele took another sip of Scotch.
What was she getting at?
He found himself literally sitting on the edge of his seat. The force of her voice, her earnest demeanor, the firm but calming cadence of her speech had riveted him. He wondered if she was having the same effect on everyone else.

—

Myers continued.

“But the single mother also knows that, while she must balance the checkbook, her children must still remain safe. And the truth of the matter is that America is not safe. We haven’t been for a long while. That truth was brought home to me in the worst possible way several weeks ago when my son and over a dozen of his students were brutally murdered by a Mexican drug cartel hit squad. I was overwhelmed by the sympathy, prayers, and many other kindnesses you bestowed upon me and my family during our time of grief. But that tragedy instilled in me a resolve to address an issue that we have been all too willing to ignore, let alone combat. The great irony is that while we have been willing to fight battles in distant fields like Afghanistan and Iraq, we’ve been losing a terrible war here at home in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Dallas.

“It was President Nixon who first declared the War on Drugs over forty years ago. That was also at a time when we were winding down from a decade-long war on the Asian continent. For forty years, American law enforcement personnel at the national, state, and local levels have fought valiantly against drug dealers despite limited resources and imposed legal restraints. Billions have been spent. But the sad truth is that hundreds
of thousands of Americans have either died or have been incapacitated mentally or physically over the decades as a result of our failed attempt to win the War on Drugs.