team on my behalf.”
“I’ll pass it along. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another matter to attend to.”
Pearce broke the satellite connection and shut down his computer. His highly trained team of professionals on the ground in Somalia already had their orders and didn’t require any further supervision from him. Pearce had other fish to fry.
Literally.
It was just after sunrise. The trout would already be biting. Time to break in the new fly rod.
3
On board
It was nearly midnight and they were still an hour away from landing in Denver. Despite objections by the Secret Service over the enormous security risks, President Margaret Myers had attended the memorial service for Ryan Martinez and the Cinco de Mayo massacre victims and their families in El Paso earlier that day.
The galley steward had just cleared away her half-eaten Cobb salad and remained below deck to give her privacy. Her closest advisors were gathered in the West Wing conference center back in Washington. She was currently linked to them on a live video feed.
Myers stood, her glass empty. She had just finished two fingers of Buffalo Trace, her favorite Kentucky bourbon. She was fifty and tired, but didn’t look much of either, even tonight, still dressed in black. Years of swimming and Pilates had kept her frame strong and lean like she’d been as a young girl growing up on a cattle ranch. She still hardly needed makeup, and her dark bobbed hair was colored perfectly.
“Anybody need to freshen up their drinks?” Myers asked as she crossed to the bar.
“I think we’re all fine here, Madame President,” Sandy Jeffers said with a tired smile. Despite his obvious fatigue, his salt-and-pepper hair was still perfectly coiffed, and his hand-tailored suit as crisp as the day he’d bought it. As chief of staff, he answered for the group.
Myers poured herself another bourbon.
“I want to thank each of you for picking up the slack in my absence. And, Bill, I’m also grateful for the security arrangements you and your team put together on such short notice.”
Secretary Bill Donovan ran the Department of Homeland Security. He nodded in reply, stifling a yawn behind a beefy hand. He hadn’t slept in three days. “We owe a great deal to our friends at Fort Bliss and the governor of Texas. We couldn’t have done it on such short notice without them.”
Myers smiled a little. “From where I sat, El Paso looked like the Green Zone with all of the tanks and helicopters you moved in there. I’m sure the press will make a lot of hay with those photos.”
“Better safe than sorry,” Donovan offered. Despite his morbid obesity, he’d proven to be an effective and energetic DHS secretary.
Myers nodded. “Of course. Now, for the business at hand.” Myers returned to her chair.
The media had jumped on the first witness’s statement that ICE agents had perpetrated the massacre. The witness had seen black military uniforms, military-style machine guns, and “ICE” emblazoned on their tactical vests, which accurately described ICE combat teams.
The idea that rogue ICE agents had perpetrated the crime fit the mainstream media metanarrative perfectly—Myers’s ruthless budget cutting was causing chaos across the government. Only in Washington, D.C., could freezing future increases in spending be counted as a “cut.”
But within a few hours it became apparent that the killers had merely impersonated ICE officers. All of the gear they wore was available for purchase on a hundred websites. The Hummer they’d used had been stolen two hours before the attack and later found abandoned and burned up in a vacant lot just across the Mexican border. Most important, every ICE agent’s location and activity that night had been accounted for.
Responsible media began reporting the new facts as soon as they became available, but Myers’s staunchest opponents resorted to a variety of conspiracy theories and began alleging a cover-up.
“Faye, why haven’t we made any progress on the shooters?” Myers asked. Faye Lancet was the attorney general of the United States and thus the head of the Department of Justice and one of its subsidiary agencies, the FBI.
“Our most reliable informants on the street are suddenly either deceased or irreparably mute. Snitches have an extremely short life expectancy in that part of the world.”
“You make it sound as if South Texas is a Third World country,” Myers said.
“In some ways, it is,” Lancet replied. “The border is still pretty porous these days.”
“Maybe this was just a local neighborhood gang,” Myers said.
Mike Early, Myers’s special assistant for security affairs, spoke up. “Possibly, but not likely. According to witnesses, they were firing machine guns, probably German HK21s.”
“How do you know that?” Myers asked.
“We found six proprietary HK ammo drums on-site, each with a fifty-round capacity. The Mexican army uses HK21s. They even manufacture their own under an HK license.”
“You think the Mexican army is connected to this?” Lancet asked.
“No. But Mexican army guns have a funny way of turning up on the streets, whether stolen or sold.” Early scratched his five o’clock shadow. “Hell, the Mexican army itself has had over a hundred thousand desertions in the last decade. God only knows how many weapons they take with them.”
“The forensics point to two weapons used that night, which is corroborated by at least three survivors who thought they saw or heard two machine guns being fired,” Donovan said.
Myers frowned. “Why couldn’t local gangs purchase some of those weapons?”
“Possible, but highly unlikely. Mexican guns don’t usually travel north. It’s American guns moving south that causes problems down there. Even if a couple of street punks could find a high-end gun seller that wasn’t a Fed, or a Fed informant, it’s clear to me the shooters knew what they were doing. They weren’t a couple of gangbanger lowlifes hosing down the neighborhood like Tony Montana,” Donovan said.
Early added, “They discharged three hundred large-caliber, armor-piercing rounds in less than a minute in controlled bursts—and on target. The bastards were definitely trained.”
“So who wanted to send a message? Why attack a house full of teenagers having a good time? And who’s the message for?” Myers asked.
“Too soon to say who the message was for with certainty,” Donovan said. “Word on the street is that it was a turf issue, and given that El Paso is Castillo Syndicate territory, it’s not too big of a stretch to say that Castillo was the one pulling the trigger.”
Myers fumed. “Castillo territory? El Paso is
“Madame President, if I may.” The deep, resonant voice of Dr. Karl Strasburg chimed in. An old-school cold warrior, Strasburg was the elder statesman of the group, having served as a security advisor to every president since Nixon in one capacity or another. His opinion still exerted a powerful sway on Capitol Hill, and his views were deeply respected in the corridors of both power and academia around the world. His impeccable style and self- effacing manners, coupled with his faint Hungarian accent, gave him an Old World charm that few could resist.
“Please, Dr. Strasburg, share your thoughts.”
“I am embarrassed to say this, Madame President, and I certainly do not ascribe to the idea personally, nevertheless I must point out that you are already seen as a weak president because you are a woman. One thing you must consider is this: if you fail to respond to this vicious and unprovoked attack with vigor, you will only strengthen the unfortunate stereotype associated with your gender in the Latin culture.”
