Edge of Battle (18 page)

“I don’t think so,” Jefferson said, “but they have radios and televisions in that facility—I’m sure he’s being broadcast to them.”

“Well, pull the plug!” Kinsly said. “Shut off those transmissions, or confiscate those radios!”

“It’s too late, Mr. Kinsly,” Jefferson said evenly. To the President, he said, “Sir, it might be too late to stop whatever happens
next. We shouldn’t overreact. We can make full repairs to the base, but we’ll need to increase manpower at this and all other bases, especially for security at the detention facility. Our forces there need to be armed and authorized to oppose any action by the Mexican authorities.”

“What are you talking about, Sergeant Major?” the President asked absently. “What do you think is going to hap…?”

“Look!”
Kinsly blurted. In response to the Mexican minister’s loudspeaker calls, several dozen men and boys had jumped on the chain-link fencing surrounding the detention facility and had begun swinging on it. At first the fence looked plenty sturdy enough, but it did not take long for the swaying to become wider and wider, until it was apparent that the fence was weakening—and the more the fence weakened, the more detainees jumped on it and joined in, causing it to weaken faster.

The camera swung back to Díaz, who was now getting into one of the news helicopters that had landed a short distance away. The helicopter lifted off, and soon his sound-amplified voice could be clearly heard on the broadcast. “He keeps shouting ‘freedom, freedom,’” Jefferson said. His cellular phone vibrated; in a major breach of Oval Office etiquette, Jefferson stepped away from the President and the others after checking the caller ID. “Go ahead…yes, we’re watching it, Major,” he said.

“Order Richter to get those people off that fence!” Lemke shouted.

“But don’t use that damned robot, for God’s sake!” Wentworth added.

Jefferson said nothing but continued to listen. Finally: “I concur, Major,” he said. “Proceed. Keep me advised.”

“Was that Richter?” Lemke asked. Without waiting to hear the answer, he said, “You didn’t order him to get those people off the fence?”

“No, Secretary Lemke,” Jefferson said. “He recommended that we establish a full defensive posture, and I concurred.”

“
Defensive?
You mean you’re not going to do
anything
but
watch those detainees break out? They’re
rioting
out there! What do you intend to do about it?”

“Nothing, except guard what we can and minimize the damage,” Jefferson said simply. He answered his cell phone again, listened, then closed it. “Rampart One reports that Díaz’s helicopter is now
in
U.S. airspace, and is heading straight for the base. He is broadcasting on a PA system on the helicopter and can easily be heard by everyone at Rampart One.”

“For God’s sake…” the President muttered. He picked up the telephone on his desk. “Get the Secretary of State over here right away.”

“Mr. President, we have to call out the National Guard…we have to bring in troops to secure that area,” Jeffrey Lemke said. “We cannot allow the Mexicans to freely fly across the border like this and spring those prisoners!”

“Mr. President, again, I’m urging restraint,” Ray Jefferson said. “It’s too late to do anything at Rampart One now.”

“Too late…?”

“By the time we move one Marine from Camp Pendleton or one soldier from Yuma or El Centro, it’ll long be over, Mr. Lemke,” Jefferson said, more firmly this time. “We’re outgunned. We can launch some Cobra and Apache gunships from Twentynine Palms…”

“Are you
crazy,
Jefferson?” Kinsly asked incredulously.

“We’re fully within our rights to chase away any aircraft inside that TFR, Mr. Kinsly,” Jefferson said. “I’m not saying we engage those helicopters, but maybe just the sight of an armed helicopter will defuse this incident…”

“And if someone gets a twitchy trigger finger, it’ll escalate it,” Lemke interjected. “Just because we have the
right
to do something doesn’t mean we
should
.”

Jefferson could do nothing else but nod in agreement. The President angrily slapped a hand on his desk, then shook his head and chuckled gloomily. “President Maravilloso and Felix Díaz
took a chance, and it paid off,” President Conrad said resignedly. “Like you said, Sergeant Major, I’m damned either way, right?”

“We’ll make sure we don’t get caught defenseless when we set up the next base, sir,” Jefferson said. “We were ready to deal with violence from migrants, smugglers, and detainees, not from the Mexican government. That will not happen the next time.”

“If there’ll
be
a next time,” Lemke said.

“Sergeant Major Jefferson, make sure that the personnel at Rampart One defend themselves to the utmost—they can use Richter’s robots if absolutely necessary,” the President ordered. “But no one interferes with the Mexican Army or the detainees. I don’t want a gun battle breaking out.”

“I’ll pass the word, sir,” Jefferson said, and he immediately picked up a telephone in the Oval Office to issue the orders.

It did not take long for chaos to erupt at Rampart One. The detention facility fence finally came down, injuring two men; several persons were badly cut when the tidal surge of detainees tried to run over the chain-link fencing and razor wire on their way out—it almost seemed as if some human bodies were being used by the crowd to bridge the wire. Women carrying children and old men were roughly pushed aside by the younger men on their scramble to freedom; dozens of detainees were screaming in pain. Detainees who hadn’t yet left the yard started running into other housing tents, emerging moments later carrying blankets, jugs of water, and personal items.

Outside the toppled fencing, Gray had stationed his men around the headquarters unit, maintenance facility with its power generators and fuel storage, medical unit, and the cages in which the more violent or criminally suspect individuals were kept—all other areas were unguarded, as the escaped detainees quickly discovered. The mess tents, barracks, legal aid unit, and personnel break units were completely overrun. The escapees filled their arms and pockets with food, bottles of water, and any personal effects they could find, like clothing, radios, game machines, and
computers; the ones who emerged from the tents with nothing ransacked the place on their way out.

“
¡Allá!
Over there!” shouted Díaz’s voice from a loudspeaker on the helicopter. He began gesturing toward the dog-pens as his bodyguards struggled to keep him from falling out of the helicopter’s open door. “More of our people are being held prisoner!
¡Láncelos!
”

At Díaz’s urging, a dozen men approached the prisoner cages, grabbing anything they could use as a weapon—chairs, shovels, kitchen tools, and pieces of pipe from the collapsed fencing. The National Guardsmen guarding the pens quickly found themselves outnumbered. “Rampart One, this is Seven, we have a situation here, am I cleared to engage?” one of the fearful guards radioed.
“Am I clear to fire?”

“Sir?” Ben Gray asked.

“Negative—not yet,” Richter replied. On his command radio, he spoke: “CID One, respond to the prisoner cages, protect the Rampart personnel, and do not allow any prisoners to be freed. Use minimal force if possible.”

“Roger,” Falcone responded immediately. Within moments he was at the cages, standing between two guards. One of the guards had his rifle shouldered and had a tear gas canister launcher ready; the other guard still had his M-16 rifle at port arms.

“Rampart Seven, this is Rampart One,
weapons tight,
don your gas masks,” Gray ordered. The two Guardsmen complied immediately, shouldering their rifles and hurriedly donning their M40A1 gas masks. The angry escapees immediately began to throw their weapons at them, and the Guardsmen stepped behind the CID unit to avoid being hit by the projectiles.

“Seven, this is Condor!” Ariadna shouted on the command net. She had been scanning the area as the detainees fled, then the area in front of the cages as the angry escapees approached, and had just zoomed out for a wider look. “Several detainees approaching your position from behind!
Look out!
”

But her warning came too late. A group of five men had
sneaked around behind CID One and the distracted Guardsmen. Before they could react, the men grabbed for their rifles, and after a brief struggle managed to wrestle them away from the soldiers. A tear gas canister ignited, covering the area with yellowish smoke.

“They got the rifles!” Ariadna radioed. “Watch out! Falcon, two beside you…”

“I’ve got ’em, Ari,” Falcone said. But it was not as easy as he thought. He was instantly pounced upon by the escapees, with as many as three men holding onto one arm. It was impossible to move slowly and carefully anymore with so many escapees on him—Falcone had no choice but to use the CID’s strength to flick the men off. Bodies started flying everywhere, and he couldn’t tell if the persons he was throwing around were attackers or onlookers, men, women, or children. Gunshots erupted, first just a few, then several on full automatic. Agonizing screams soon mixed in with the gunshots.

The helicopters overhead no longer avoided overflying the base—they circled right overhead now, their rotor wash helping to clear the tear gas. When the smoke cleared moments later, the television cameras saw the Cybernetic Infantry Device…

…surrounded by two dozen prisoners and escapees strewn about like debris after a tornado, none moving. It was a scene of absolute horrific carnage. Blood covered everything. Some of the bodies looked mangled, their limbs twisted in grotesque angles; one detainee was stuck on CID One’s left knee, his dislocated arm caught in one of the robot’s joints, being dragged around like an errant leaf or scrap of paper. When Falcone finally noticed the person stuck to him, he reached down and pulled the man off, leaving part of his hand and wrist still jammed on the robot, blood spurting everywhere like a leaky garden hose. Unthinking, Falcone tossed the man aside as if the body was nothing more than a piece of paper stuck to the bottom of his boots.

It was all captured on international television, live.

“Oh…my…God…” the President breathed as he watched the ghastly sight on his TV monitors. All of the major broadcast, cable, and satellite stations were playing the live video now.

“Mr. President, we’re going to need to clear that airspace so we can get emergency medical units out there,” Ray Jefferson said. “I suggest we request the California Highway Patrol respond first until we can get the National Guard out there.”

“Do it,” the President said in a whisper. He moved to the window behind his desk and stared out the window. Jefferson picked up a phone to issue instructions.

“Falcone…he’s getting out of the robot,” White House Chief of Staff Kinsly remarked. “This is the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen on television. I still can’t believe what I just saw.”

“Falcone has got to be prosecuted,” Attorney General Wentworth said. “The Mexican government…no, the
world
will demand nothing less.” A moment later, he asked, “So what’s he doing now, Jefferson?”

“Sergeant Major, have that man placed under arrest,” the President said, still staring out the window into the Rose Garden.

“No need, Mr. President,” Jefferson responded.

The President whirled around and stared in utter disbelief at his National Security Adviser.
“What did you say to me, Jefferson?”
he roared. “I ordered you to place Falcone under arrest! He’s got to be a lunatic! Even if he didn’t kill any of those people, he precipitated this entire episode by his actions! He’s going to go to prison for a very, very long time. He…” The President stopped, finally noticing that everyone else in the Oval Office was staring at the TV monitors. “What in hell is going on?”

“We’re about to see the last casualty in this debacle, sir,” Jefferson said stonily, sadly.

They all watched as Frank Falcone wandered, seemingly dazed and disoriented, through the piles of battered and bloody bodies around him and his Cybernetic Infantry Device. He stopped, zipped his flight suit all the way up to his chin, then stood limply, his arms hanging straight down, his head bowed. After a few mo
ments, he looked up, reached down, retrieved a blood-covered M-16 rifle from the ground, pulled the charging handle to make sure a round was in the chamber, checked that the safety was off, turned it around, inserted the muzzle in his mouth…and pulled the trigger.

W
HEELER
R
IDGE
,
SOUTH OF
B
AKERSFIELD
, C
ALIFORNIA
D
AYS LATER

The man jumped when he saw the American military officer blow his head off on the taped replay being broadcast again on TV, but the next thing he felt was…intense amusement, almost glee.
“Yop tvayu mat! Usrattsa mozhna!”
he swore in Russian, being careful not to be too loud—these motel cabin room walls were paper-thin. The men and women behind him were stunned into silence, not daring to believe what they’d just seen on TV. “That guy must have really been fucked in the head—of course, now he does not even have a head anymore!”

“Chto sluchilos’, Polkovnik?”
Ernesto Fuerza, known as Comandante Veracruz, the man standing watch by the back door and windows, whispered in good Russian. “What is it, Colonel?”

“I am watching the self-destruction of the American idiots trying to put military forces on the Mexican border,
Comandante,
” Colonel Yegor Viktorvich Zakharov said. “They cannot seem to get out of their own way. That poor bastard, Falcone, was probably the only one committed enough to do the job, and he has just blown his silly head off with an M-16 assault rifle—and not be
cause of anything he did, but because he felt sorry for the prisoners he killed who were
also
stupid enough to shoot themselves trying to escape!”

Fuerza got another one of the men in the room to take his post, then stepped into the room—not to watch TV, but to watch Zakharov. The ex–Russian military officer always wore sunglasses, with the right lens slightly lighter than the left; he would occasionally dab under his left eye also, so he obviously has suffered some sort of injury. He drank like a damned fish, mostly chilled vodka or anything he could get his hands on, but he never seemed drunk or even impaired. He definitely liked his women too—he enjoyed the company of any number of prostitutes who always seemed to be nearby at every camp, hostel, or safe house they visited.

“Some of those ‘stupid’ prisoners were my people, Colonel,” Fuerza said irritably.

“Which ones are you referring to, Fuerza—the ones that were stepping over old men and women as they tried to escape, the ones that listened to your president’s brave orders to try to release those prisoners with two armed soldiers guarding them, or the ones who decided it was a peachy idea to attack that robot?” Zakharov’s demeanor was still ebullient, but his mood had changed—everyone could feel it. He definitely didn’t like being challenged.

“Fuerza, ‘your’ people are dead because they were stupid. They were
free,
for God’s sake—in twenty minutes or less they could have strolled back across the border to safety, and all the Americans would have done was wave bye-bye to them. Instead they decide to turn
back
toward the prison they just escaped to release some criminals that they would never associate with anyway. Are those the ones you feel sorry for?”

“Colonel, all those people want is freedom and prosperity in exchange for hard work,” Fuerza said. “Coahuila—what they now call Texas—Nuevo Mexico, and Alta California are home to them, even though a U.S. flag flies over the land. It belongs to us—it will
always
belong to us. It will one day…”

“Fuerza, please, you are boring me,” Zakharov said, downing another shot of vodka. “I really do not give a shit about your struggle or about your claims. Your followers may believe that nonsense, but I do not. You call yourself Comandante Veracruz as a reminder of the bloodbath that accompanied the American invasion of Veracruz in 1847; you strut around like some wild-eyed Muslim fanatic inciting the people to rise up and take what is theirs. But it is all for show. You get your picture on the cover of
Time
Magazine and you think you are a hero. In reality, you are nothing but a drug and human smuggler with a simple, effective message that has captivated the imagination of some otherwise mindless Americans. I cannot abide patriots or zealots—criminals, I can deal with.”

“Then I have a deal I wish to discuss with you, Colonel,” Fuerza said.

Zakharov looked to refill his glass, found the vodka bottle empty, then tossed the shot glass away with disgust. “What do you have in mind—gunning down more Border Patrol agents and corrupt sheriff’s deputies? Becoming a drug dealer, like you?”

“You want money—I have plenty of it,” Fuerza said. “What my men and I need is training and protection. You have experienced professional soldiers, and you want to bring more of them into the United States. Until your army is ready for whatever havoc you intend to create here, I have need of your services.” He searched a box of supplies on the floor, found another bottle of vodka, retrieved the shot glass, and gave them to Zakharov. “
Napitok, tovarisch polkovnik
.”

“I do not drink warm vodka, and I do not make plans with drug dealers,” Zakharov said, putting the unopened bottle in the tiny freezer section of the cabin’s noisy old refrigerator. He looked over at a corner of the cabin, where a man was setting up a plain white bedsheet and adjusting some lights, and shook his head with amusement. “Time for another videotape, I see?”

“It is the best way to keep the people of the world aware of our
struggle on their behalf,” Fuerza said. “One Internet message can travel around the world in an hour these days.”

“It will also be the best chance for the American FBI to catch you,” Zakharov said. “They can analyze the tiniest background noises in a recording and identify the characteristics of any digital or audio recording; they can pinpoint any IP address in the world within moments; they can trace the origin and path of any package put in the mail anywhere in the world. Why give them any more clues to investigate?”

“The reward is worth the risk, Colonel,” Fuerza said confidently. “We get dozens of new recruits, tens of thousands of dollars in cash donations, and hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of free publicity every time we post a tape on our Web site, and even more when it is rebroadcast by the Mexican and American media. My messages are even rebroadcast overseas on Al-Jazeera and the BBC. We have received donations from as far away as Vietnam.”

“I will be sure to stay as far away from you as possible while your messages are uploaded to the Internet and mailed out to the media—sooner or later the FBI is going to swoop down on you, just like they did to Bin Laden and al-Zarqawi. You cannot avoid scrutiny if you decide to play out in the open.”

“As far as assisting your operation, Colonel, we will remain secret and concealed,” Fuerza said, “but as for my battle, I prefer to do my fighting out in the open.”

Zakharov took the bottle of vodka from the freezer and downed another shot. “Oh, really? Is that why you wear that fake hair, wear sunglasses even indoors at night, and disguise yourself to look like three or four different nationalities?” He saw Fuerza frozen in surprise and smiled. “You actually think no one sees you are wearing a disguise? It is good, but not
that
good. You look like some ridiculous Hollywood cross between Pancho Villa and Muhammar Qaddafi.”

“This disguise is
my
affair, Colonel,” Fuerza said. “The Mexi
can people need a symbol of our struggle for freedom, and I find it easier and more effective to do it in disguise.” Zakharov shrugged. “I have found using the media to enflame public opinion works much better in this country than the gun. The revolution
is
coming, Colonel. The power of the people is absolute and real.”

“Courageous and defiant…to the last.”

“‘My ne mozhem ubedit’sja iz nalichija koe-chego, chtoby zhit’ dlja togo, esli my ne zhelaem umirat’ dlja etogo.’
‘We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.’ Ernesto Che Guevara,” Fuerza quoted in Russian.

“Your namesake, I gather? How touching.”

“He recognized early on that the source of most of the oppression and poverty in the world is imperialism and capitalism, and the number-one proponent of both is the United States of America,” Fuerza said. “Ernesto Guevara was one man, a man of education and privilege, a trained physician who could have had anything in life he wanted—yet El Che chose instead to go toe to toe against the American Central Intelligence Agency to fight capitalistic aggression in South and Central America and the Caribbean…”

“Until he was sold out by Castro and captured by the CIA in Bolivia.”

“El Che dared to criticize Castro for selling out to the Soviets for money—in doing so, he became a martyr to the socialist movement,” Fuerza said. “His truth has been borne out by history: Cuba is nothing but a stinking Communist shithole exploited by Castro; Mexico is little more than America’s whore because the government sold the workers out just to line their own pockets. El Che is a hero to us all. I hope to be half the man he was.”

“Well, who knows what Guevara could have done with videotapes and the Internet,” Zakharov said. “But Guevara’s problem was he expected too much from the people of the Congo and Bolivia…”

“Not the people—the
people
were solidly behind him. The cor
rupt government in Brazil fought him; then, when El Che’s revolution looked like it might successfully overthrow the government, the Bolivians paid Castro to betray Guevara. But Castro didn’t have the guts to assassinate Guevara himself, because El Che was as much a hero of the Cuban workers’ revolution against the corrupt Batista regime as Castro himself. So Castro ratted him out to the CIA, who was more than happy to do Castro’s wet work for him.”

“Thank you for the history lesson,” Zakharov said drily. “Where are the damned weapons you promised me?”

“Five thousand dollars a day for you, a thousand per day for your men, free travel across the border, and all the weapons you want,” Fuerza said. “A few security and enforcement chores, keeping the rival cookers and the corrupt cops like Nuñez back there in line. That is all.”

Zakharov looked as if he wasn’t listening, but a few moments later he shook his head. “Ten thousand a day for me, two for my men…and one hundred thousand dollars as a signing bonus.” Fuerza’s eyes widened in anger. “Take it or leave it, Comandante. Or else go back to using your own
banditos
and paying off corrupt cops to secure your drug empire. They do such a good job for you, no?”

Fuerza thought for a moment—actually, he thought about whether he could get away with executing Zakharov, but the Russian’s men were too loyal to try to pay off and turn on their leader, at least right at this moment—then nodded.
“Prevoshodnyj, tovarisch polkovnik,”
Fuerza said. He extended a hand, and Zakharov clasped it.
“Spasibo.”

“You do not have to thank me—you have to
pay
me,” Zakharov said.

Fuerza watched as Zakharov turned to look at the television again, and he could almost feel Zakharov’s body temperature rise when the helicopter cameras tracked a man and two women running from an enclosure out to where the dead officer that had piloted the robot lay. “Who is he, Colonel? He is the one you want, is he not?”

Zakharov half-turned toward Fuerza and chuckled. “You are very observant, Comandante,” he said. “Yes, that is Major Jason Richter, commander of Task Force TALON, the one that defeated my forces in Egypt and Washington. With him is his assistant, Dr. Ariadna Vega, Ph.D.”

“
Ariadna Vega?
That is the name of a famous guerrilla fighter during the Mexican War of Independence,” Fuerza said, his face transfixed in surprise. “She is one of the most celebrated women in Mexican history.”

“Well, she’s one tough
minino,
that’s for sure,” Zakharov said. “I all but killed her in Brazil, and she was back in the fight just a few days later. The other one is Richter’s former partner and now the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,
Kelsey DeLaine.
Learn their names and faces well—they will undoubtedly be after both of us. They must be defeated at all costs.”

Fuerza was staring at the television until the camera zoomed in on the decapitated body, cutting Vega from view. “So. Was Richter the one who shot out your left eye, Colonel?”

“He did
not
shoot out my eye, Fuerza,” Zakharov snapped. “He missed by a mile—the bullet ricocheted off my helicopter’s rotor, and a fragment lodged in my eye. A hack doctor in Havana told me the eye had to be enucleated or the uninjured eye would sympathetically shut down.” He removed his sunglasses, revealing an empty eye socket. Fuerza did not—rather,
dared
not—look away, afraid of appearing squeamish at the sight of the horrible injury. “I took one of
his
eyes in exchange for the one he unnecessarily took from me—unfortunately, his did not fit me, and it was too late to give it back to him.”

“Why do you keep it open like that?”

Zakharov chuckled. “It puts great fear into my adversaries, Comandante, forcing them to look into another man’s skull.”

“But the pain…?”

“The pain helps keep me focused on my objective.”

“Which is?”

“Acercamiento de camión, capitán,”
the lookout at the window
said. Everyone drew weapons, including Zakharov. Fuerza went to another window and watched as the pickup truck with a camper—a familiar sight in this part of rural southern Bakersfield, at the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains. They trained their weapons on it carefully, looking for any signs of danger, even after the driver flashed the headlights in a coded “all clear” signal. Fuerza requested and received a coded “all clear” from his lookouts around the perimeter before signaling that it was safe to approach the cabin.

While two men kept watch on either side of the camper, three more men began unloading. They brought in two coffin-looking fiberglass canisters and several wood and metal boxes of assault rifles, pistols, and ammunition. The men quickly opened the crates and distributed guns and ammo to each other to check over, while Zakharov and Fuerza concentrated on the “coffins.”