Balance of Power: A Novel (15 page)

“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said as Molly stepped into the apartment.

“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked warmly.

“Because of the Speaker’s press conference, and the debate,” he said as he leaned over to kiss her on the cheek.

He could feel her coolness. “They’re just going to make fools of themselves,” she said, shrugging off her coat and throwing it into a chair.

He held his tongue and studied her. Why now? Why did this thing have to happen now, just when she had started warming to him and looking at him differently?

“Was it your idea?” Her tone was direct and clinical.

“Think we should talk about it? I mean with you at the White—”

“Maybe I can talk some sense into your head so you can stop this lunacy before you commit professional suicide.” Her cheeks were red.

He changed the subject. “I thought I’d fix one of our old student dinners, carbonara. That be okay?”

“Don’t try and avoid the subject,” she replied quickly. “Come on, Jim. You start a constitutional crisis and you’re worried about carbonara? What have you been doing all day? I was researching this stupid Letter of Marque and Reprisal, and whether you can still use it.”

“Look,” he said, “I’ve got to be back on the Hill in an hour or so. Let’s just eat. Okay?”

She relaxed slightly. “I’ve got to get back too. To undo whatever you’re going to do next.”

She watched him without a word as he finished preparing dinner. He set two places at the small kitchen table. In his hurry, he spilled water on the table when filling her glass. Finally, he pointed to the chair, and they sat down together.

They started eating without a word.

“You can’t do it, you know,” she said, halfway through the silent meal.

He rolled the spaghetti noodles onto his fork with a large spoon, catching some of the chopped bacon inside. His stomach jumped. Oh, no. He tried to look unconcerned. “Why not?”

“Because we don’t do it anymore.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t.”

“But there’s a
reason
we don’t,” she said somewhat smugly.

Dillon felt his stomach tighten more, “Like what?”

“That was a power that used to exist. It doesn’t anymore. It is a
former
power.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Jim, it’s well known.” She looked around the room. “Do you have a law dictionary?”

“Not here.”

“Look up
Letters of Marque
. It says it is ‘A power
formerly
granted.’ We agreed not to do it anymore. We formally agreed. In a
treaty
. The Declaration of Paris.”

He put his fork down. “Did you research it?”

“A little. The Declaration was signed in 1856. All the major powers agreed not to use it anymore. We can’t do it, Jim.” She drank from her coffee cup and watched him. He didn’t show any emotion. She was disappointed. It was why she had come—to tell him and watch his face. She had hoped to handle it better, but had finally just blurted out the facts. She had been torn between keeping him from driving off the political cliff and showing him up because she loved to compete with him. He was clearly caught off guard, but she had expected more of a response.

“Is that it?” he said finally.

“Is that what?”

“Is that the only reason we can’t do it?”

“No, there are others, but that’s good enough. We promised the whole world we wouldn’t. It would look pretty foolish to do it anyway, wouldn’t it?”

Dillon got up and opened the refrigerator. He took out the milk and poured a glass. He held it out to her and raised his eyebrows. She wrinkled her nose. He put the milk carton back. He sat down and drank deeply from the cold milk. He exhaled, and gazed intently into her eyes. “We didn’t sign the Declaration of Paris.”

“What do you mean, we didn’t sign it?”

“We didn’t sign it. I don’t know how else to say it.”

“But the law dictionary says…”

“They’re wrong. I saw that too. About had a heart attack, because it was after I’d done most of my research. It sure seems to say we gave that power away. But I went and found the actual treaty—the Declaration of Paris—and we didn’t sign it, because of this and a few other
things. The kicker is, though,” he said, moving closer to her, perhaps to convince her, “that when the Civil War broke out, the Europeans suddenly thought they should agree to the restrictions we wanted on Letters. We said okay, but wanted to exclude the Civil War. They wouldn’t do it,” he said, throwing up his arms in apparent disgust over the diplomatic discussions of a century ago, “so the thing was never signed by the United States.”

“How can that be?” she asked, truly puzzled, confused.

“Simple. We never agreed. Even if we had, I’m not sure it would have mattered. You know con law. Treaties can’t trump the Constitution. We can’t sign a treaty with France agreeing to disregard the First Amendment….”

She leaned forward against the table and lowered her voice, as if talking to someone who was truly ignorant. “You mean you really think Congress can do this?”

He nodded and finished his noodles.

She took advantage of the silence to make her point stronger. “But even if we haven’t agreed in a treaty, it’s ancient history. Those kinds of ships don’t even exist anymore.”

“We’re going to do it differently.”

“How?”

He glanced up and considered whether to tell her. “The Letter is going to the USS
Constitution
Battle Group, not a private ship.”

She sat back with her mouth open slightly and tried to absorb what he had said. It was impossible. It was one thing to imply that Congress could commission an armed merchant vessel and conduct some mischief, but to send a Letter to a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier? “That’s
impossible
.”

“Not impossible.”

“How can you do that? There isn’t one thing in the Constitution that even
implies
Congress has that power.” She stood and paced around the table, breathing harder than she would have liked as the implications of a Navy
battle group under the control of Congress alone sank in. “It would be
unconstitutional.”

“Says who?” Dillon replied, his voice raised slightly.

“Whoever looks at it will come to that conclusion. They
have
to.”

“No, they don’t. There’s precedent for using the Letter of Marque or Reprisal with government forces.”

“Where?”

“In due time. You’ll see it in due time.”

She sat down again, agitated. “You think this is a game? You come up with some clever idea to jerk the President around to get him to do what you want?”

“No. It’s no game,” he said. “The President chose what he wanted to do, or
not
do, and now he has to live with the consequences. This isn’t some ploy to get the President to act, it’s Congress acting legally when the President won’t.”

“But nobody can read that into the Constitution! It’s not there,” she said, her voice rising involuntarily.

“Yes, it is. Plus,” he added with an edge to his tone, “you’ve always liked the liberal scholars and judges, the ones who find new rights in the Constitution all the time. Right?”

“What are you talking about?” she said, anger growing.

“You
love
constitutional law when it’s going your way, when Earl Warren and William O. Douglas are discovering new rights that aren’t even remotely in the document, all in the name of privacy and individual rights. Well, it’s your bed. Now you’re gonna have to sleep in it. They always said it’s a ‘living document.’ It has to change to accommodate more modern times. Right? Fine. So be it. Since it’s a living document, these are the times to which it must adapt and this is what it means. We don’t have armed merchant vessels anymore. Assigning a Letter of Reprisal to an unarmed merchant ship would be futile. Obviously, the only ship that could receive such a letter today is an armed ship, and the only armed ships are Navy
ships.” He finished his sentence more loudly than he meant to.

She looked at him as if she were seeing a complete stranger. “I never figured you for someone who was
dishonest
. I never thought I’d see the day when you, of all people, would be saying things so blatantly wrong that you couldn’t look at yourself in the mirror.” Her words were filled with disappointment. She breathed in quickly. “President of the Christian Law Students Association, encourager of honesty, ethics, character—the one who always used to say: ‘Do whatever is
right,
and let the chips fall where they may—you have to live with yourself.’ ”

She smiled. “It’s one of the reasons I liked you then. I thought you were a person of incredible integrity. I didn’t always agree with you, but you were always trying to find the truth, to make things better. You made life exciting. For a while recently, I thought you still might.” She shook her head sadly. “I guess not anymore. You’re the one who was always calling the Supreme Court dishonest for coming up with interpretations that you said were ridiculous. Driven by policy, you said. That was you, wasn’t it? That was…”

“What are you getting at, Molly? You used to go to those meetings. You believed the same things. You still do, I’ll bet. You said you didn’t want to work for a big law firm because you were
sure
they’d make you compromise your principles or your”—he groped for the right word—“righteousness.” He paused. “You end up working for the President, the king of all compromise, a man with
no
principles—”

“How can you say that? How is it ‘no principles’ to choose not to enter the cycle of violence—”

“
Spare
me the cycle of violence. The only reason he doesn’t want to do anything is because he is beholden to the Chinese Indonesian investors who bought a bank in his hometown in Connecticut….” He watched her face. “Didn’t know that, did you?” he asked pointedly.

“No,” she said defensively.

“How can you argue how right he is and not even appreciate he may have been bought?”

“The Speaker wants to run off half-cocked because the precious shipyard that built the ship is in San Diego, and the owner of the shipping line is a contributor to his—”

“What a crock!” Dillon exclaimed. “He wanted to stop, to offer peace, but he couldn’t. The President has an obligation to protect the citizens and property of the United States. He is the Commander in Chief, and has a duty—”

“That’s right!
He
is the Commander in Chief,
not
the Speaker,
not
the Senate, not the whole Congress put together. They don’t have the power. If they try to exercise it, it is usurpation! It’s like a…a…coup!”

Dillon found himself breathing as hard as he did when he ran in the morning. His heart was beating furiously. He realized they had been shouting. He watched Molly. He leaned back in his chair, looked at the cold food, and closed his eyes. He wondered what to say next. “Look, Molly, this thing is legit. We’re not making this up. We believe—”

“It is
not
legit. It is a political move, and a violation of the Constitution. If the Speaker goes through with it, there will be consequences.”

“Like what?” he asked, sitting forward quickly. “What is the President going to do?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” She stood and looked around for her coat.

“Is that it? Is that how we’re going to leave it?” he said, following her to the front door.

She turned to look at him as she pulled on her coat. “I just hope the Speaker comes to his senses before he does this. If he doesn’t, it will be the largest constitutional crisis this country has ever seen.” She lowered her voice and leaned toward Dillon. “I promise.”

Dillon looked at her without speaking. He read the hardness in her face. He stared at her beautiful eyes, like
a third grader in a stare-down contest, and blinked as she turned and walked out the door and down the stairs. He went slowly back to the kitchen and began putting the dishes on the counter. He picked up her coffee cup with the sunflower on it and tossed it into the trash under the sink.

T
HE MOON WAS BRIGHT
,
DIRECTLY OVER THE TWO
dark boats as they raced north toward the island. The two coxswains from the Special Boat Det were highly trained in high-speed ocean transits. They worked their throttles carefully and expertly to avoid being launched off the top of a wave or stuffing their boats in the trough of the next swell as they tore through the dark ocean at thirty-five knots, well short of the maximum speed of their new NSW 30’ Rigid Hull, Inflatable Boats. RHIBs were very fast SEAL insertion craft with fiberglass bottoms and inflatable sides, equipped with the newest electronics and weapons.

The lead coxswain watched his GPS position on the monitor in the dash of the RHIB as they approached the dropoff waypoint. He turned and looked over his shoulder at Lieutenant Jody Armstrong. “Six minutes,” he said loudly, so as to be heard over the pounding sound of the ocean on the rigid fiberglass hull. Armstrong did not reply but passed the word and continued to scan the horizon for any signs of boats. He was particularly wary of a cigarette boat charging up unannounced.

As they approached the waypoint, the coxswain reduced his throttle and gradually slowed the RHIB to idle. Armstrong and the other three SEALs in the two swim pairs moved quickly to the F-470 Zodiac atop the engine cover, forward of the console.

The moonlight made it easy to see the SEALs silhouetted in the other RHIB doing the same.

“Let’s go,” Armstrong said as they pushed the Zodiac into the water and climbed aboard. The SEAL coxswain scrambled to the fifty-five-horsepower motor and started it up immediately. The four SEALs settled into the Zodiac as the coxswain turned it away from the RHIB and toward the island. He checked his portable GPS receiver for a heading to the dropoff point two thousand yards from the beach where the SEALs would go ashore.

They wore dark jungle camouflage uniforms and jungle boots with swim fins over them and had blackened faces and dark Nomex hoods over their heads. Under their uniforms, each wore a diveskin, a thin stretchy fabric that gave them some protection from cold, but helped primarily in protecting them from jellyfish, parasites, sea snakes, and sand fleas. Their dive masks were down around their necks as they awaited the signal to ease into the ocean.

As the Zodiac crossed over the satellite-designated waypoint, Armstrong gave the signal. Four SEALs rolled silently out of the boats. They pulled their masks onto their faces, ensured their weapons were safely attached, and began the two-thousand-yard swim to the shore. They kick-stroked and glided, so that nothing broke the surface except part of their heads and shoulders. The water was warm, even in the dark night hours. The surf was small and no cause for concern as they approached the shoreline.

Lieutenant Jody Armstrong felt the sand underneath his hands, which trailed slowly underneath him in the black ocean. He drifted slowly to shore, driven by the waves. He hovered there, just below the surface of the Pacific, waiting, listening, suspended in two feet of water, just off the beach. He slowly lifted his head sideways. He could see the dark island silhouetted by the moon. No lights showed from the island. Armstrong looked for the other black heads penetrating the surface of the lagoon. His
swim buddy, QMC Lee, looked at him and gave him a thumbs-up.

Lee reached down to the pocket on his right thigh and pulled out a waterproof bag, opened it, and took out a monocular goggle. He slowly pulled off his mask and slipped on the battery-powered night-vision goggle. As he switched it on, his left eye immediately perceived the world in shades of green. He scanned the beach and the jungle, right and then left, for any signs of life. He looked over at Armstrong, who waited for the signal. Armstrong’s eyes looked eerie to Lee because his pupils were completely dilated in the darkness.

Armstrong pulled out his own night-vision goggle and strapped it on after removing his mask. The other two did likewise. They lay in the water for three full minutes, only their heads exposed, looking for anything unusual, including dogs or birds that could warn of their approach. They removed their fins while the others provided security. When he felt secure, Armstrong began his slow crawl up the beach. The others rose to a crouch and followed him into the jungle.

Armstrong scanned the jungle and listened to the foreign sounds. His primary concern was of a sentry with a thermal imaging device. They stood and walked, their fins hanging from their left forearms, just behind their weapons. They made sure their dripping-wet MP-5 submachine guns were covering the entire beach.

They looked left and right as they walked carefully over the beach into the dense jungle. Armstrong had picked this lagoon as an easy place to go ashore where they were unlikely to be discovered. It was three miles from the small bay where the cigarette boats were docked. Between them was dense jungle. It was unlikely the terrorists had guards this far away from their base—if they had a base.

Armstrong thought of the limited information they had about the island and who might be on it. They could be walking into an anthill. It was impossible to tell what was on the island under cover of the jungle canopy.

Armstrong pulled his infrared signal laser out of his shoulder pocket and pointed it out to sea. He turned it on and signaled to the four SEALs in the other Zodiac. A few minutes later the boat scraped against the sand and the rest of the squad jumped out and pulled the boat into the tree cover.

Armstrong turned on his small red light to look at his chart and examined it for sixty seconds under his poncho with the point man, while the others provided security. Satisfied his chart coordinates matched his GPS position, he motioned to move out into the jungle. The point man walked carefully as he led the group inland for ten minutes, and turned east, parallel to the shore. Their footing was slippery and wet from the saturated ground and rotting vegetation. The air was pungent and moldy. The night sounds were less noticed than their own breathing.

Each of the SEALs kept his automatic weapon at the ready as they watched for any movement or sign of life. Although there was real danger, Armstrong and the others felt at home. Each jungle was different, but they had been trained well by the Negritos of the Philippines. They knew most of the ways you could die in a jungle. This time shouldn’t be much different.

Admiral Billings aimed his knife at the top of the soft-boiled egg perched in front of him. Just as he prepared to strike off the top he stopped, as did the conversation of the three other usual invitees to breakfast at 0600 in his private wardroom. CNN was about to repeat its headline broadcast of the amazing story out of Washington that had been dominating the news, the Letter-of-Marque-and-Reprisal. The announcers said those words as if they were all connected together.

These newscasters had been around for a while. They had heard every word out of Washington for so long they could almost write most stories before they happened. But this one they had never heard of. Nobody had. The phones
were ringing off the hooks of the few naval historians in the country who could speak intelligently on the subject. Even the constitutional law scholars still seemed confused, put off by the entire subject. They wanted to talk about Substantive Due Process, or the First Amendment, the things they had spent their whole lives trying to understand. They simply weren’t prepared to discuss a topic from left field, especially without knowing the political implications.

Unlike most of the people trying to speak intelligently about the issue, Admiral Billings was a student of naval history. He thought that to be an effective naval officer, one needed to know what had come before, how battles had been lost and won, and what lessons the modern Navy could learn from the old Navy. He liked to think he had learned the lessons of Admiral Nelson, John Paul Jones, and David Farragut well enough to become an admiral.

His chief of staff ate breakfast in three minutes as he always did, eating only dry toast and drinking his morning tea. The operations officer reviewed the message board and ignored the television, having heard the same lead story every thirty minutes for the last two hours. But Beth, the admiral’s intelligence officer, watched the television screen as she picked up a piece of bacon and chewed it thoughtfully.

They listened as the newscaster said what they knew, that the Speaker was holding the House in session and the Majority Leader in the Senate was doing the same thing, until they issued a Letter of Marque and Reprisal to strike back at the terrorists in the Java Sea.

When she moved on to another “expert,” the admiral interrupted. “What do you make of this?”

All three looked at him and saw that he was talking to Beth.

“Never heard anything like it, sir. I don’t know where they get the authority. I just…”

“Right out of the Constitution,” said the admiral, “according to the Speaker. He was on earlier. He read the
section; I don’t remember what it is, but it’s right there.”

Beth shook her head. “I’ve just never heard of anything like it. It just doesn’t feel right…”

“Why not?” the admiral asked, digging for the last of the soft egg, trying not to break the shell. “If it’s in the Constitution, how can there be anything wrong with it? What I don’t get is what ship they have in mind. A Letter of Marque used to go to armed merchant ships in the old days—ships that could attack with some force. Merchant ships today probably have a couple of rifles and shotguns aboard, but nothing significant. What’s Congress going to do, send a couple of able-bodied seamen from a container ship after a bunch of terr—”

The Admiral stopped as a radioman came in and handed a message to the chief of staff. He read the message and turned to the admiral, his face quite serious. “It’s the report from the SEALs ashore, sir. They’re in voice communication and reporting their findings.”

“Well, what did they find?”

“Nothing.”

The admiral’s eyes narrowed automatically, as if keeping out smoke, as his mind began to work on the problem. “What else did they say?”

“The bad guys had definitely been there. They found the camouflage netting in the bay where it was imaged. Only there isn’t anything underneath.” He paused as he read the message again. “The cigarette boats are gone. Not a trace. There are signs of life around—rotten food, cartons, ammo—but no people. They say it looks like they left in the middle of the night. The SEALs are RTB.” Returning to Base.

The admiral sat back and looked at the others at the table. “Well,” he said softly. “Looks like they’re not as dumb as we had hoped.” He pressed his lips together in a tight line of frustration. He looked up. “Any word from the
Los Angeles
?”

“No, sir,” Beth answered. She looked at her wristwatch.
“They’re on an eight-hour reporting schedule. Next report is in two hours, at 0800.”

The admiral nodded. “I sure hope they didn’t screw this up. If we lose these clowns, we’ll never be able to go home.” He picked up his coffee cup and began reading the morning sports page of the ship’s paper, the
Daily Constitution
. The others, knowing the unspoken signal, excused themselves and went to work.

The admiral stepped onto the admiral’s bridge and his aide called the rest of the bridge to attention as he always did and the admiral uttered “as you were” and they all went about their business. He sat in the leather captain’s chair welded to the deck by a sturdy pedestal; the elevation and angle allowed him to see out the windows both toward the bow of the ship and down to the flight deck. He took the cup of coffee his aide offered him with the message board as he did every morning. It was his favorite mug, a white porcelain cup that had a Jolly Rogers flag with a skull and crossbones and VF-84 underneath—his last fighter squadron. The squadron that he had commanded. There was something special about being the commanding officer of a fighter squadron. He would never forget it—the camaraderie, the sense of belonging, the mission. Even when there wasn’t a particular mission, there was
the
mission: defending democracy and freedom from tyranny and oppression.

The bridge was cold even though outside it was already in the high eighties. Billings pulled his blue ball cap down closer to his eyebrows and looked at the lightening sky over the dark sea. The turbulent sea was a dark, purplish blue that looked as if it were covered with oil and was fighting to break through. The clouds were gathering their energy to fight the brutal sun, hoping to make it through the day as adult clouds. The sun was just about to the horizon, about to transfer the light from Washington,
D.C., exactly on the opposite side of the world, exactly twelve hours away.