The Land of the Free (2 page)

Border Patrol Agent Cam Burrows was
not in a forgiving mood.  Not since visiting his friend and fellow Agent Jason
Gilbert in the hospital that morning.  His outrage was building over the events
leading to Gilbert’s hospitalization.  Gilbert had been patrolling near
Sanderson, Texas, between San Antonio and the Big Bend area, when three armed
pickup trucks crossed the Rio Grande into US territory.  He knew the protocol
full well.  He was not to confront raiders with superior armaments.  He was to
stand back and report the incident rather than risk his life and possibly start
an international incident.  But he had a job to do, and he had his pride.  He
was disgusted at all the times he simply stood by while armies crossed the
border unchallenged.  Welling up inside him, his resentment caused something in
his temperament to change on that day.  He made toward the group and turned on
his siren and lights.

The pickups swung their machine
guns around and peppered Gilbert’s Chevy Tahoe with bullets from top to
bottom.  Gilbert managed to alert his team of the incursion in spite of his
wounds.  The sound of automatic weapons fire could be heard over the radio
before the bullets destroyed its circuitry.  When the helicopter reached
Gilbert a half hour later, they found him near death.  Burrows visited the
hospital as soon as he heard, and was overwhelmed to see his friend lying there
comatose, suffering major blood loss and systemic shock, battling for his life.

Now, Burrows took the exit off
route 90 and proceeded past Seminole Canyon State Park.  He left the road and
came to a promontory above the Rio Grande where he could view a broad expanse
of river.  The spot was among his favorites to observe the river and enjoy the
serenity when nothing was happening.  Burrows was 35, thin but not athletic,
and a little on the short side.  He had close cropped brown hair and a neatly
trimmed mustache, as well as a habit of talking to himself, developed over
thousands of lonely hours on duty.  After waiting several hours, he saw it.  A
convoy of three pickups with machine guns in their beds crossing the river back
into Mexico. 
Those bastards!  They’re crossing the border back and forth
like it’s their back yard.

A radical idea came upon Burrows. 
He knew that reporting the crossing would accomplish nothing, and the next
Agent who crossed their path would meet Gilbert’s fate, or worse.  He would
follow them and find out where they were based.  He had his high-end camera, so
he would use it.  They wouldn’t be able to ignore the pictures so easily.

There were not many convenient
spots in the region for crossing the Rio Grande.  The banks were steep upstream
of the Amistad Reservoir, often like a canyon.  He waited until he was sure
they could not observe him and descended the valley side to the river, crossing
it easily with his Tahoe.  The rutted trail up the other side of the canyon was
barely identifiable as anything but rough riverbank.  But in his years of
patrolling, Burrows had become expert at off-road driving, and had little
trouble making the climb.  He was now in Mexico, a blatant violation of his
instructions.  But he didn’t care.  This had gone too far, and he was going to
force them to take action.

As he cleared the crest of the
canyon, Burrows saw the dust tail of the receding trucks in the distance.  In
front of his vehicle, he could see their tire tracks very clearly.  They were
using heavy duty off-road tires that left deep impressions in the dirt.  It
would be no problem tracking them.  But this was not a flat desert floor.  He
had to move slowly, almost at a crawl.  His own tires compromised between road
comfort and some off-road prowess, but today that prowess was too little.  He
occasionally crossed a primitive road, but the tracks he was following did not
use roads, so he stayed on course.  His progress was slow, and he had to make a
strategic decision.  The day was late, and he could not risk traveling at
night, lest he fall into a deep gully and never get out.  On any other day,
common sense would have prevailed and he would have turned around to go home. 
But this wasn’t any other day.  Whether it was his visit to Gilbert or other
factors, today he was determined to see things through.

As the sun sank low in the sky,
Burrows was sure he saw large airplanes coming in from the southwest, landing
somewhere not too far to the south of his location. 
There’s no air base
around here, so far as I know
.  He watched the activity into twilight and
there was no mistake about it.  Not only were they coming in from the
southwest, they were also taking off into the southwest. 
Now that’s really
weird
.  No airport he had ever seen would let flights take off back in the
same direction they came from.  The direction was always dictated by the wind,
so planes could both take off and land facing the wind for greater air speed.

Burrows found a gully that was deep
enough to hide his vehicle, but not so steep that getting in and out would be a
problem.  He parked for the night, and climbed onto the roof of the Tahoe.  It
was still summer and the evening was hot, but the drier air here deep in the
desert made it relatively comfortable.  He sat on the Tahoe’s roof for an
additional hour, watching the endless stream of airplanes coming and going.  He
took out his binoculars to get a closer look.  They were large cargo planes,
but he could not identify the models, and there were no markings that he could
make out.  Finally well after dark, Burrows flopped down the back seats of his
Tahoe and made a makeshift cot to sleep on.  He would pursue this again
tomorrow.

President Jackson Torres sat at his
desk sipping his third cup of coffee, irrationally hoping that more coffee
would calm his nerves, and preparing for his upcoming meeting with a special
envoy from the Chinese government.  The meeting was at the specific request of
the Chinese Premier.  The envoy was known even in Washington as a rising star
in Chinese politics, and a power broker in international circles.

The door opened without as much as
a knock.  Through it walked Hanna Morgensen, the Secretary of State.  She was
barely over 5 feet tall, but heavyset.  Her eyebrows naturally dipped in the
middle of her forehead to shape a permanent frown.  For the benefit of anybody
who thought her appearance accidental and not indicative of her demeanor, there
was a second warning.  She always wore a brooch in the shape of a coiled cobra,
with garnets in its eyes.  Torres assumed she must have a drawer full of
identical brooches, because she never failed to show up wearing one. 

Torres instinctively tensed as the
Cobra entered.  He knew that before she left, she would intimidate him into
agreeing to something inimical to his values.  She was not his choice for
Secretary of State.  Most of his cabinet picks were names he chose, which were
then vetted by his anonymous donors.  But they had insisted specifically on the
Cobra for State.

Torres counted among his ancestors
the Mayflower Americans and the governing class of Puerto Ricans.  He even had
a convenient smidgeon of Native American blood.  His complexion was light, his
features Caucasian, yet in the race conscious cauldron that was America, he was
considered multiracial.  He was a tall man with obvious muscle tone and a
square jaw.  His credentials were perfect on a superficial level to qualify him
as President of the United States.  But his strong look could not completely
cover the deep insecurity he carried in his role.  He was afraid of the Cobra,
and he was even more afraid that she saw it.

“Good morning Hanna,” opened Torres
with an apprehension he hoped to hide, trying his best to appear confident. 
“It’s always a pleasure to see you first thing,” he added with only the
faintest hint of irony.  The Cobra made no effort to acknowledge the greeting
or break her permanent frown.  She merely tilted her head downwards slightly,
so the glasses on the end of her nose gave way to her unobstructed glare.

With Torres still cringing,
Morgensen sat down opposite him at his desk and opened the folder she was
carrying.  “You need to get two points across to the Chinese,” she opened. 
“First, if they want continued access to our markets, they have to recognize
the difficulty this causes us with our trade deficits.  The capital flow from
us to them has to be re-circulated.  Accordingly, we expect their purchases of
Treasury securities to continue at their present percentage of trade.  Second,
we expect them to revalue the Yuan with respect to the Dollar.”

“But that’s impossible,” objected
Torres, leaning back in his chair to try to put himself at ease.  “The very act
of buying our debt increases the value of the Dollar with respect to the Yuan.”

Morgensen was unmoved.  “Then
they’ll have to get creative in other ways.  They can sell Euros, for example. 
If they don’t like that, they can invent their own solution.  But they will
revalue the Yuan.  Our position is final.”  She looked at him over her reading
glasses as if to further drive home the point.

Torres wondered whether her
definition of “our position” held any regard for what he thought.  He fidgeted
in his chair and gripped his pen tightly enough to flex it visibly.  “Is there
anything else?”

“You will be firm with them.  Use
threats if you must.  They have to see that you’re serious.”

Torres said nothing, but inside his
head he was shouting: 
I could send you to Beijing.  That should scare them
quickly enough
.

The Cobra rose and started towards
the door while Torres bid her goodbye with “Thank you,
Hannula.
”

She quickly turned and gave him a
glare that could cut through inch thick steel.  She hated her formal name, and
was sure that Torres knew that.  She turned her back and walked out the door
without any further comment.

Torres was as entrenched in the
establishment culture of America as most holders of that office have been. 
Born in Charlottesville, Virginia, where his father was a visiting scholar at
the University of Virginia History Department, Torres was schooled in the
private schools of New England.  He then attended Yale, where he developed good
working relationships with many future power brokers.  The establishment
interests saw in him a perfect blend of their values combined with a background
that they hoped could bring together different cultural groups to build
consensus on issues of importance.

Next in to see Torres was National
Security Advisor Mansour Kurdistani.  “Kurdi,” as he was known, had been
brought in for his knowledge of the peoples of Southwest Asia, while having
also proven his allegiance the progressive Western political and economic
orders.  Kurdi was always a welcome reprieve after Morgensen.  He was slightly
shorter than average with dark straight hair and a full mustache.  He walked in
a gentle rocking manner that had a way of putting people at ease.  He remained
on his feet as he began.  “Mr. President, I’ll leave the routine reports with
you should you want to review them, but today I want to highlight this one in
particular.”

Kurdi sat deferentially in the
chair across from Torres, the same chair Morgensen had aggressively made her
own.  He handed Torres a memo while holding his own copy.  “I’ll summarize it. 
Chinese naval maneuvers around southern Japanese islands are intensifying, and
the details we have picked up from their communications seem to indicate a high
level of interest in Japan.  It’s important to qualify those statements with
the limitations of our listening capabilities.  Their important communications
are scrambled, and we’re nowhere near being able to break those codes.  What we
can read amounts to low level chatter, and we monitor trends in that chatter. 
In all likelihood, they know that we listen, so I don’t put it past them to
send us backdoor messages.”

“They’re threatening to invade
Japan?” asked Torres as he folded his hands behind his head and leaned back,
deliberately provoking Kurdi with an overstatement of what he had heard.

“Sir, in my opinion, they are
merely trying to remind you that they can project their power if forced to do
so.  It may be that they decided now was the perfect time to do so, ahead of
your meeting with their envoy.  An actual invasion is not a realistic danger,
again in my opinion.”

“Have they made any threats against
Taiwan?” asked Torres.

“No Sir, at least not by way of
naval maneuvers or low level chatter that we can monitor.”

“That’s strange by its absence,”
noted Torres.  “Of course, if they were considering anything there, their
communications would be encrypted.  It wouldn’t be part of any posturing on
their part, right?”

“Yes Sir, that’s likely.  Would you
like me to raise it at our staff meetings, to get all the opinions on the
table?”

“Please do.  Thanks for your
briefing Kurdi, and get back to me with your consensus as soon as you meet.”

Kurdi was about to take that as his
cue to leave, but hesitated as he began to move to the door.  “What else is
there, Kurdi?” asked Torres.

“Sir, we’ve conducted an assessment
of an earlier issue that had come up.  Do you remember when we found computer
viruses in the control systems for our drone fleet?”

“I remember.  What was your
conclusion?”

“First, I have to say that there
was a lot of pressure on us to find that Iran was responsible.  Since the
Persian Gulf is a major arena where the drones are used, it seemed plausible at
first.”

“So you don’t think it’s Iran?”
asked Torres.

Kurdi looked defensive, with his
head low.  “Iran is utterly lacking in the programming sophistication that we
found in the viruses.  China and Israel are the only countries that have that
level of military computing horsepower.  Aside from us, of course.”

“What was so sophisticated about
it?”

“Our drones have one area of
vulnerability.  They are piloted remotely.  So in theory, their control
mechanisms could be overtaken by an enemy who overrides our signal.  Our
encryption should make that impossible, but not if certain codes are collected
and transmitted from inside our system.  That’s what these viruses were
designed to do.”

“So our drones are compromised?”
asked Torres.

“Possibly, and not only our
drones.  All civilian aircraft have had the same control systems in place,
since the mid 1990s, allowing the ground to take over the plane, and lock out
the pilots.  It’s a way of foiling hijackers, but now we’re talking about a
hostile party being able to take over the plane.”

“Thanks Kurdi.  Please send a memo
to all senior military planners, and include a note that I approve of your
conclusion.”  Kurdi nodded and left Torres’ office.

Torres’ political rise was almost
inevitable, as he had a natural skill at engaging people’s attention, and an
insider’s pedigree.  His father was a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations and was widely noted for his expertise on the history of world trade,
from colonial to modern times.  His rise seemed effortless, and money came to
his campaigns without his having to ask or negotiate.  Most of it came from
effectively anonymous sources where the true source of the money was never
known to him.  The suburban Maryland district he represented in Congress took
to his progressive ideas with overwhelming enthusiasm.  Within four years and
with the death of an older Maryland Senator, Torres easily claimed that seat at
the age of 38.  By that time, political insiders were openly discussing how
long it would be before his appearance on a national ticket.  But with approval
from insiders came suspicions from the people that he was indifferent to their
interests.  Despite the mistrust of the common people, Torres nonetheless rode
a wave of progressive enthusiasm to an easy electoral victory, aided in no small
part by the nation’s aversion to the heavy handed governance of the previous
administration.  Torres was beloved in progressive circles, not least because
he was elected without needing to placate the populist sentiments that were so
alien to progressives.

Torres’ final visitor was his Chief
of Staff Gerry Levine.  Levine was respectful but in a way that always left the
impression of a façade.  “Is everything set for the special envoy?” asked
Torres.

“Yes Sir, though I also have to ask
whether you’ve worked everything out with Ms. Morgensen.  She was pretty firm
about being first in this morning.”

Torres extended his arms and looked
up in a mock gesture of surrender.  “Gerry, the Cobra is killing me.  Couldn’t
you tell her I’m at some monastery in Antarctica or something?”

“Sir, if I did that, it’s me who
would find himself in Antarctica, or at least pieces of me would be,” replied
Levine with an awkward smile.

Torres gave Levine a quick glance
as if to remind him that only one of them was going to make jokes during these
discussions, and Levine quickly became serious again.  “Keep on Kurdi for me. 
I need to know what their take is on the Chinese naval maneuvers.”