forces they’d already be running in full stride.
The overall plan was simple enough, at least in theory. The drug cartels had held Mexican society in a stranglehold for decades, corrupting the political system with either cash or violence. By wiping out the Bravo organization, Cruzalta and his compatriots would be able to push aside the Barraza regime and help assemble a new national government. It would be a dangerous and lengthy venture for sure, but it was the first and perhaps only chance Mexico would have to form a new and fair democratic government, free from the tyranny of narcopolitics.
To assist Cruzalta and his allies in the formation of a new Mexican government, Myers directed Attorney General Lancet to provide a secure means by which the hundreds of Mexican politicians, military men, and law enforcement officers who were living in official and unofficial exile in the United States could be safely vetted, contacted, and recruited for voluntary service in the Mexican project.
Myers also promised Cruzalta that the United States and Mexico would soon draft new trade, border, and security treaties subject to approval by both national legislatures. More than anything, the new treaties represented Myers’s sincere attempt to assuage any Mexican fears that the U.S. was somehow imposing a new kind of hegemony over Mexico rather than trying to form a genuine political and economic partnership.
That was the big picture. Myers knew there would be many smaller steps that had to be taken to begin this incredibly arduous journey. But given the scope of the undertaking and the breakneck timing, she couldn’t afford a linear approach. She had to attack several fronts all at once, putting her most trusted staff to work on each one independently. If all the pieces didn’t fall into place on time, the entire plan would fail.
After speaking with Pearce on Skype, Myers made three phone calls. The first was to Jackson, authorizing him to begin assembling a most-wanted list. The next morning, Jackson contacted the DEA, FBI, and DHS for recommendations. Twenty-four hours later, fifty names had been selected: twenty-five in Mexico, twenty-five in the United States. The trick now was to both find and track them all. Jackson focused DAS, RIOT, and Mind’s Eye operations on the task, particularly for the Mexican list. The American list would be easier to find and track, thanks to the NSA, which had warrantlessly recorded, sorted, and stored every e-mail, phone call, tweet, and Facebook post of every American for the last few years as part of the counterterrorism efforts of the federal government, often in contravention to FISA restrictions. The “big data” analytics that had been originally pioneered by American corporations like Google and IBM to predict consumer behavior were now being perfected and deployed by the federal government to secure the nation against future terrorist attacks. In fact, dozens of private companies were wittingly or unwittingly participating in the NSA’s global data-mining efforts.
An hour after Pearce called with the good news about Cruzalta, Jackson reported that all fifty targets had been identified and were being tracked. He couldn’t guarantee how long that would last, so time was of the essence.
Myers’s second phone call on the night of July 29 was to Attorney General Lancet. She was tasked with creating the legal framework for Drone Command. Lancet built organizational firewalls around Drone Command so that it would report directly to the president, completely insulating it from both the DNI and DoD command structures. Though a legal fiction, it was made an extension of JSOC, which operated with near impunity from congressional oversight and could invoke either Title 10 or Title 50 protections as needed.
Myers’s last phone call had been to Early. He immediately contacted T. J. Ashley with the Drone Command offer and she accepted it on the spot because it sounded “interesting,” knowing full well she would be shaping the future of U.S. drone warfare for the next decade—and maybe even changing the face of warfare itself.
Early brought her in to meet Myers six hours later. Ashley wasn’t the least bit intimidated by her first visit to the White House or her first meeting with the commander in chief. Myers immediately liked the self-possessed younger woman. So did Jeffers, yawning over a cup of coffee. Just over five feet tall, with short-cropped dirty blond hair and hazel eyes, the trim, athletic engineer was a firm handshake and all business.
“What do you think you’re going to need to begin operations in seven days?” Myers wanted to know.
“Depends on the targets,” Ashley said. “When will I have those?”
“Soon, including locations. Give me your best estimate.”
“More hours in the day and a boatload of money should do the trick,” Ashley said.
“Money I can find. More hours I can’t.”
“Then I’ll take the money and sleep less. Do you want to review the organizational plan I’ve put together?” Ashley opened a leather satchel and handed Myers an inch-thick document.
“How could you have possibly drawn up an organizational plan already?” Myers asked.
“I wrote it a year ago as a kind of thought experiment. It seemed to me that this was the natural direction our defense establishment would be taking in the near future. I just didn’t realize when I wrote it how near the future actually was.”
Myers mentioned Pearce’s suggestions for Drone Command organization. Ashley had already incorporated them. She and Pearce had discussed the essential concepts a few years ago when he was trying to recruit her into Pearce Systems.
Early grinned like a hyena. “Can Pearce pick ’em or what?”
Jeffers nodded. “He sure can.”
Myers dropped the organizational plan on her desk. “I don’t need to read this. You just be ready to jump when I give the go signal. The rest I’ll leave up to you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Ashley couldn’t believe her good fortune.
“Mike will be your liaison with the attorney general. See her next. Any other details, run them past Sandy.”
“Anytime, day or night,” Jeffers said.
“Thank you, sir. I’ll take you up on that.” Ashley checked her watch. “Better get to work.” She glanced at Early and he nodded, grabbing his cell phone as they both exited the office.
“So far, so good, don’t you think?” Myers asked her chief of staff.
“Just one question,” Jeffers said, pouring himself another cup of coffee. “Have you thought about how you’re going to start building a coalition in Congress for this thing?”
“You played sports in college, didn’t you?”
“If you call intramural tennis a sport.”
“What do you know about old-school, smash-mouth football?” Myers asked.
“You know I suck at metaphors, especially at this time of day.”
“Give it a shot,” Myers said.
“I take it you mean a ground game with lots of mud?” Jeffers asked.
“No. More like a Hail Mary.”
Drone Command Headquarters, Fort Meade, Maryland
Having the most-wanted kill-list names and locations was one thing, but human targets had a nasty habit of moving around, especially if they ever got wind that they were on something like a kill list. With any luck, Drone Command would be able to take them all out in one fell swoop, but that was highly unlikely. Ashley needed to keep them under constant surveillance. For that she’d need to deploy the “persistent stare” technology of ARGUS-IS married to MQ-9 Reaper drones. The Autonomous Real-time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System provided live wide-area video images by employing a 1.8-gigapixel digital camera, itself a construct of 368 5- megapixel smartphone-camera CCD sensors. At high altitudes, the ARGUS-IS could track all of the movement within an entire city simultaneously, resolving objects as small as license plates. By storing almost three days of video imagery, analysts could replay suspicious movements and establish potentially threatening patterns of behavior.
ARGUS-IS was an ideal surveillance platform for battlefield commanders, but civil libertarians in the United States claimed that such “persistent stare” capabilities were the equivalent of warrantless searches of private individuals. Ashley deployed ARGUS-IS over her U.S. targets anyway because Lancet had drafted an executive order exonerating Drone Command from any such legal liabilities should the issue arise.
With the proven ARGUS-IS system in place, Ashley decided to experiment with two other systems. She paired the new Stalker drones that, in theory, could stay aloft forever by means of an electric battery that was
