Edge of Battle (47 page)

“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 recommend 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 as
sisting 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.”

O
VER SOUTHERN
A
RIZONA
T
HE 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 flying 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 per
formance, 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.

The aircraft performed another low-altitude aerial refueling on this leg of the journey, ensuring that the smaller aircraft was completely topped off before continuing further. The MC-130P had a
combat range of almost four thousand miles and could have made two complete round trips with ease; the smaller aircraft had only half the range and needed the extra fuel to maintain its already-slim margin of safety. Once topped off, the MC-130P orbited at one thousand feet above the ground about sixty miles northwest of the city of Durango, over the most isolated portion of the central Sierra Madre Occidental Mountain range and directly in the “dead spot” of several surveillance and air traffic control radar systems. The electronic warfare officer on board the Combat Shadow was on the lookout for any sign of detection, but the electromagnetic spectrum remained quiet as the two aircraft split up.

Just north of the city of Zacatecas the smaller aircraft jogged farther east to avoid Guadalajara’s powerful air traffic and air defense radar system. Now the aircraft was no longer over the mountains but flying in Mexico’s central valley, so it was back down to five hundred feet or less aboveground, using terrain-avoidance radar, precise satellite-guided navigation, night vision devices that made it easy to see the ground and large obstacles, and photo-quality digital terrain and obstruction charts, with computerized audio and visual warnings of nearby radio towers and transmission lines. Northeast of the city of San Luis Potosí, the aircraft made a hard turn south to avoid Tampico’s coastal surveillance radar.

Now the aircraft was flying in the heart of Mexico’s population centers, with 80 percent of the country’s population within one hundred miles of their present position—and most of the country’s air defense, surveillance, and air traffic radars as well. Plus, they had very little terrain to hide in now. Staying far away from towns and highways, relying mostly on darkness to hide their presence, the aircraft’s crew prepared for the most dangerous part of the mission. After over five hours of relative peace and quiet, the last twelve minutes was going to be very busy indeed. The crew performed their “Before Enemy Defended Area Penetration” checklist, making sure all lights were off, radios were configured to avoid any accidental transmissions, the cabin was
depressurized and secure, and the crew members waiting in the cargo area were alerted to prepare for evasive maneuvers and possible hostile action.

Somehow, after the events that had transpired in the past several days, it was not hard to imagine they were flying over enemy territory—even though they were flying over Mexico.

Immediately prior to the last turning point over the town of Ciudad Hidalgo, eighty miles northwest of Mexico City, came the first radio message on “GUARD,” the international emergency frequency, in English: “Unidentified aircraft at the two-niner-zero degree radial of Mexico City VOR, seventy-three DME, this is Mexico City Center, squawk Mode Three five-seven-one-seven; ident, and contact center on one-two-eight point three two, UHF three-two-seven point zero. Acknowledge immediately.” It was repeated several times in both English and Spanish, even after the radar return completely dropped off the scope.

The message was never answered, of course—which only served to alert the
Fuerza Aerea Mexicana,
the Mexican Air Force, and the Interior Defense Forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The Mexican Air Force had one airbase northeast of Mexico City dedicated to air defense, with nine F-5E Tiger II fighters assigned there; two were on twenty-four-hour alert. By the time the aircraft was twenty miles west of Mexico City, the fighters were airborne. But the pilots had had very little actual night low-altitude air defense training, and the radars on the American-made Tiger IIs were not designed to detect low-flying aircraft against a heavily industrialized and populated background, so the fighters could do nothing else but fly a medium-altitude patrol pattern, away from the commercial airline arrival and departure paths and surrounding high terrain, and hope that Mexican air traffic control could spot the unidentified aircraft again and vector them in close enough for visual contact.

But the Internal Affairs Ministry’s response was far different. Primarily charged with identifying, tracking, and stopping insurgents and revolutionaries that might threaten the republic, the
ministry responded to every such alert, no matter how small, as if it was an impending coup or attack on the capital.

The Political Police, which commanded a larger helicopter force than the army and air force combined, immediately launched several dozen helicopters of mixed varieties over the capital, mostly American-and Brazilian-made patrol helicopters that carried a flight crew of two, an observer/sniper in the rear, along with searchlights; a few were equipped with infrared cameras. The helicopters flew preplanned patrol routes over the capital, concentrating on scanning government buildings, embassies, and residences for any sign of trouble. Another dozen helicopters were placed on standby alert, ready to respond immediately if necessary; the Internal Affairs Ministry also could commandeer as many aircraft of any kind as it wanted, including helicopter and fixed-wing gunships and large transports. A small fleet of VIP helicopters was also placed in standby or prepositioned to various places around the capital, ready to whisk away high-ranking members of the government to secure locations.

At the same time, the twenty-five thousand members of the Federal District Police were put on full alert and ordered to report to their duty stations or emergency assignments. Within the Federal District, the Federal District Police had ultimate control, even over the military; they were just as well equipped as the armed forces, including armored personnel carriers, antitank weapons, attack helicopters, and even light tanks. These ground and air forces were deployed throughout the Federal District and immediately began closing off side streets, shutting down bars and restaurants, restricting citizens to their homes, and establishing strict movement control throughout the capital. The highest concentration of Federal District Police were at the Palacio Nacional, Zocalo, Embassy Row along the Paseo de la Reforma between the Mexican Stock Exchange and the Chapultepec Polanco district, the major hotels near the Independence Monument and Lincoln Park, and the Internal Affairs Ministry itself.

Mixed in with all these protective forces were the Political Po
lice, whose primary job was to maintain surveillance on all of the important and high-ranking Mexican politicians, their families, and major associates—including their staffs, bank accounts, telephones, e-mails, and postal correspondence, unofficial as well as official; and the
Sombras,
the Special Investigations Squad, assigned to keep an eye on the highest-level persons in the Mexican government and report any suspicious activities directly to Felix Díaz. During these emergencies, every member of the Political Police was brought into the ministry headquarters at the Bosque de Chapultepec and ordered to update their contact files and begin careful monitoring of their assigned targets to discover any clues of possible conspiracies against the government.

Located in the south-central edge of Chapultepec Park just south of the zoo and west of Castillo de Chapultepec, the Ministry of Internal Affairs complex was in effect a walled fortress—unlike most government buildings in Mexico City, citizens were not permitted to freely come and go, and there were no tours. A series of Napoleonic-style office buildings surrounded the complex, creating the outer wall of the complex, with Federal District Police armed with automatic weapons stationed on the rooftops. On each side, the buildings were connected by Spanish-style arches with ornate iron gates. The gates looked decorative, but they had been stressed to stop a five-ton truck from crashing through them, and the width of the opening had been purposely reduced to less than that of an armored personnel carrier.

Inside the outer walls formed by the older office buildings were the ministry’s operations buildings—the investigator’s offices, communications, arsenal, and barracks, housed in three plain-looking rectangular boxlike buildings arrayed in a triangular shape radiating out from the center of the complex. In the center of the triangle was the main ministry building, a Stalinist-era-looking eight-story tower, resembling simple blocks progressively smaller in size stacked atop one another, topped with a tall antenna housing structure that supported hundreds of antennas of all sizes and kinds. The building not only housed the minister’s of
fices and those of his extensive bureaucratic staff but also the electronic eavesdropping and computer centers, the intelligence analyst’s offices, the extensive prison complex, the offices of the Political Police and
Sombras,
and a so-called special medical center in the subfloor areas—the interrogation center.

Unlike most of the beautiful, graceful architecture of the Bosque de Chapultepec or the Zocalo, the Internal Affairs Ministry was a dark, uninspiring, foreboding, and ominous place—and that was just the feeling from the outside. Very few persons ever spoke about the facility openly, especially about the activities in the center building—what the people of Mexico City called the
“lugar de la oscuridad”
—the “place of darkness.” It was meant as a message to the people of Mexico City: we are watching you, and if you dare cross us, this is where you will be taken.

“Why the hell did we come back here, Elvarez?” Minister of Internal Affairs Felix Díaz snapped as they headed through the security blast doors to the command center conference room. “If we’re under attack, I should be heading to the airport to evacuate.”

“The safest place for you until we get a report on the evacuation route is here in the ministry building—it can withstand anything except a direct aerial bombardment,” deputy minister José Elvarez said. “As soon as I can verify the security of the Métro and the airport, we will depart. In the meantime, you can get a firsthand report on the situation.”

“Bullshit, Elvarez. Let’s head to the airport in a ministry armored vehicle right away and…”

“Sir, I cannot plan an evacuation route without a report from our agents throughout the city, even if we took a main battle tank,” Elvarez said emphatically. “And if you do not personally direct your staff to secure the records, gather information, and handle the emergency, they will all flee the building and leave it wide open for whoever caused this alert.”

“I will personally cut out the eyeballs of any man or woman who runs out on me,” Díaz growled. Obviously he wasn’t happy about this situation, but he quickly followed along. The rest of the
senior staff of the Internal Affairs Ministry was already in place when Felix Díaz entered the conference room. “Take seats,” he ordered. “Report.”

“Mexico City Air Route Traffic Control Center notified the Minister of Defense that an unidentified low-flying aircraft was spotted briefly on radar about seventy miles outside the city,” the command center duty officer responded. “Defense notified us immediately, and we issued an emergency situation action order to all Internal Affairs departments immediately.”