“It’s no secret what weapons they carry, Mr. Kinsly—it’s all on their Web broadcasts and ops report they publish online, in exact detail,” Jefferson said. “It’s possible…”
“The fact is, Jefferson, that when the tape gets broadcast on TV, everyone will believe what this Veracruz guy says,” Kinsly argued. “And the media will broadcast the tape, even if they don’t check its authenticity first. The American Watchdog Project will be called racist murderers, and we’ll be blamed for allowing them to be out there doing the Border Patrol’s job—or, worse, charging that they’re working with the Border Patrol to execute illegal migrants.”
The President thought for a moment; then turned to Ray Jefferson. “Sergeant Major, get TALON moving out there to find this other eyewitness so we can prove that Zakharov is still in the country and working with Veracruz…”
“But, sir,” Kinsly protested, “if the press sees those robots out there, and they’re even seen anywhere near the illegal immigrant population, it’ll look like we’re organizing a government-sponsored vigilante terror campaign against them, first with the Watchdogs and then with Task Force TALON. We’ll be roasted alive by the press and…”
“If it is Zakharov out there attacking the Border Patrol and working with Veracruz to incite violence, we’re going to need all the firepower we can get,” the President said. “I’m not going to run and hide while some Russian terrorist and some drug-smuggler punk create a nationwide race riot in the United States. Task Force TALON may be America’s bull in the china shop, but they get the job done. I just hope they can find Zakharov and Veracruz before it’s too late.”
He turned to Jefferson and jabbed a finger. “But they do it by the book, Ray—that means search warrants and rock-solid evidence before they go in the field. I don’t want any repeats of the Rampart One fiasco, Sergeant Major, or the robots get sent to the trash compactor, and you and Richter spend what’s left of your military careers distributing deodorant in Djibouti. Get on it.”
OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE
UNITED MEXICAN STATES, PALACIO NACIONAL,
ZOCALO, MEXICO CITY
THAT SAME TIME
“He dared put the military on the border without consulting me—twice!” Mexican president Carmen Maravilloso said angrily, nearly tossing the phone on the floor in anger before her aide Pedro could collect it and safely put it out of reach. “How dare that man ignore me? I am the president of the United Mexican States!”
Women in general and especially women outside the home were never very highly regarded in Mexico, and female politicians even less so, but Maravilloso—her given surname was Tamez, but she changed it when she became a national news anchorwoman on Mexico’s largest television network years earlier—fought to change that perception. Maravilloso’s entire political life had been a struggle, and she used every trick in the book—personal, feminine tricks as well as political—to get an advantage.
After becoming one of Mexico’s most popular and recognizable television personalities in both news and variety entertainment shows, she married a young, up-and-coming politician seven years her junior and helped him ascend from virtual political obscurity to become first the governor of Mexico’s largest state, then president of the United Mexican States. Like Jacqueline Kennedy in the United States, Carmen Maravilloso was just as popular as her husband, not just in Mexico but around the world. She liked being around the rich and powerful and could hold her own in just about any forum anywhere in the world, from attending the Little League World Series in Taiwan with Fidel Castro, to a state dinner at the White House, to conducting a surprise guided tour of the presidential palace with one hundred astonished visitors.
The Mexican revolutionary constitution prohibited the president from running for reelection until six years after leaving office, and since that law had always been assumed to apply equally to the president’s spouse, everyone believed Maravilloso would go back to being a television personality after her husband’s six-year term ended. She had different ideas. Her surprise candidacy was immediately challenged by her political foes, and the question went all the way to the Mexican Supreme Court, where the twenty-five-judge court ruled against her in a hair-thin majority: in order to prevent the establishment of a nepotistic quasimonarchy, no member of a president’s immediate family could run for president within one full term, six years, of the president leaving office.
But that didn’t stop her either: Maravilloso requested and received an annulment of her marriage from the Roman Catholic Church, on the grounds that her husband defied the Church’s wishes by not wanting children. It was widely thought that the situation was the reverse, but her husband did not contest the pleading—convinced not to do so, it was rumored, with a secret eight-figure tax-free divorce settlement.
In a country that had the fourth-lowest divorce rate in the world in which the Roman Catholic religion was recognized as the official state religion in the constitution, this shocked the Mexican people—but delighted most of the rest of the world, including women in the United States of America, who saw Maravilloso’s candidacy as a boon to women’s rights and a slap at the powerful male-dominated macho culture in most of the Third World. Although this development too was argued in front of the Mexican Supreme Court, popular opinion in favor of Maravilloso’s courage and dedication was loud and insistent, and the court refused to consider the case. Maravilloso won her election in a landslide.
She was a woman who was accustomed to getting what she wanted, and no one—especially no male, not even the President of the United States—was going to deny her. Carmen Maravilloso was in her early fifties but looked younger by at least ten years, with long flowing black hair, dark eyes usually hidden behind designer sunglasses, and a slender, attractive figure. She was a tough, no-nonsense politician, known for occasionally lighting up a Cuban cigar and letting an expletive or two “slip” past her full red lips when the opportunity suited her.
“How dare he do this without consulting us?” Maravilloso screeched. She lit up a Cohiba Exquisito and wielded the thin cigar like a dagger, aiming it at everyone she spoke to. She aimed it first at the Minister of National Defense, General Alberto Rojas: “I want twice as many soldiers on the border as the Americans have. How many can we send there?”
“Madame President, they have as many troops just in the state of California as we do in our entire army,” the general said. “We cannot outgun them.”
“They are only National Guard troops…”
“I am talking about the National Guard, madam,” he said. “California is the most populous state in America and can field a vast number of paramilitary forces—even though heavily committed around the world, their national guard outnumbers even our regular military forces in every category. You do not want to escalate a military confrontation, señora.”
“Then we will take our case to the United Nations Security Council and to the Organization of American States,” Minister of Internal Affairs Felix Díaz said as he breezed through the doors to the president’s office. “This situation is becoming an international crisis, Madam President, and we should respond accordingly.”