Edge of Battle

Excuse me, ma’am, but what’s the question here? You got more insider avenues than Martha Stewart.”

“TALON wasn’t designed as an investigative system, Agent Purdy,” Jason said. “TALON is a high-tech individual motorized infantry unit, equivalent to a heavy rifle, missile, or mortar squad. It’s better if it…”

“You guys are killin’ me,” Purdy said, shaking his head in pure exasperation. “You’re tellin’ me you have a gazillion-dollar robot and all these fancy unmanned reconnaissance aircraft out there and you can’t help me find one damned kid in an artichoke field in the Coachella Valley? You”—he went on, turning to Kelsey—“can’t requisition these guys to help you track down the one other survivor of a terrorist assassination, the guy that may lead us to the whole gang?” He glared at them both. “With all due respect: what kind of pansies are you guys? That’s all you do all day is whine and tell your subordinates no, no, no?”

“You’ve never seen a CID unit in action, Agent Purdy…”

“I’ve seen ’em on TV enough to know they’re a hell of a lot faster, stronger, and tougher than those Russians that shot me in the back,” Purdy interjected. “Yeah, sure, robots aren’t your typical undercover agent. But that doesn’t mean we can’t put them and the rest of your stuff to work. It just takes a little imagination and brainpower, Major. What’s the matter—the Army not issuing creative thought to its field grade officers anymore?” Jason smiled and nodded in surrender; Purdy nodded in satisfaction and turned to Kelsey. “And you, Miss Director—I don’t want to hear the words no or I can’t do that in my presence, with all due respect. If you don’t want to use your power or authority as director of the freakin’ FBI, hand it over to me— I’ll show you how to get the job done.”

“Keep it in check, Agent Purdy…” Angelica Pierce warned.

“No, he’s right, Angelica,” Kelsey said. She looked at her watch, then at Janice Perkins. “Janice…?”

She had her personal digital organizer out before Kelsey asked the question. “We’ll be taking status reports from the SACs and the foreign bureaus on the flight back to Washington,” she said immediately. “Meetings in Washington start at thirteen hundred hours. The first one is with the intelligence staff, followed by the meeting with the directors of national intelligence and central intelligence at Langley. We’ll have one hour after that to prepare briefings and recommendations. We brief the AG at sixteen hundred hours, the National Security Adviser and Chief of Staff at sixteen-thirty, which I think will go at least two hours, and then we brief the President. He may ask for it earlier because he has the speech to deliver at Annapolis.”

“That’s way too much information, Agent Perkins,” Purdy said. “No one wants to know how the damned sausage is made, for Christ’s sake.”

Kelsey thought for a moment, then nodded resolutely. “Janice, I need you to…”

“Have the deputy director take the status reports and report any unusual or significant activity to you,” Janice interjected, making notes on her PDA with amazing speed, “because you’ll be in a strategy meeting with Major Richter, Dr. Vega, and the charming Agent Purdy, preparing a plan to utilize Task Force TALON to apprehend suspected Consortium terrorists that you think have infiltrated into the southwestern United States with the use of Mexican human smugglers.”

“Tell me you can cook and I’ll marry you tonight, sweetheart,” Purdy said to Perkins.

Janice only winked at the veteran Border Patrol agent in reply, then asked, “Are you going back to Washington, ma’am?”

“Back to all those damned fool boring-ass meetings?” Purdy mumbled under his breath. “How can she bear to miss any of them?”

“I’ll be back for the meeting with DNI and DCI,” Kelsey said. “The deputy will have to take over all other chores until I return.”

“That’s what assistants are for, ma’am,” Purdy said.

“Thank you for your insights, Agent Purdy,” Kelsey said, letting a little exasperation show in her voice. “I just gave you one hour of my time to put together a plan of action to use Task Force TALON and the FBI to assist you in tracking down the terrorists that killed those Border Patrol agents. Now, if you’re not all jokes and hot air, you had better start talking to me, and it better be good. Jason, Ari, have a seat. When I get on my plane for Washington, I want a plan in place and all the players tagged and ready to go as soon as I get the word from the White House.”

Paul Purdy slapped his hands together and rubbed them excitedly. “Now that’s what I was waitin’ to hear, ma’am!” he exclaimed. “It won’t take ten minutes to tell you what I want to do to track down those bastards that killed my friends and slaughtered those innocent people. Then, you tell me how you can help me do my job.

“This isn’t the Army, my friends; it ain’t the FBI; it ain’t even the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection,” he went on seriously, looking at each one of them in turn, then settling his gaze on Ariadna’s worried expression. “I’m talkin’ about the Border Patrol, the real Border Patrol. We been around a long time, doin’ our jobs the best we could. We do things a little differently out in the field. You follow my lead and help me do my job, and we’ll nail those murderous sons of bitches soonest.”

He looked Jason up and down with a smile on his face, then slapped him on the shoulder. “You’d better get busy growin’ some facial hair, young fella—if you can,” he said. “You look way too clean- cut for where we’re goin’.”

CHAPTER 5

CORONADO NATIONAL FOREST,

SOUTHEASTERN ARIZONA

TWO NIGHTS LATER

“Welcome to a very special edition of The Bottom Line, my friends and fellow Americans. I’m Bob O’Rourke, speaking to you from the Coronado National Forest about thirty miles southwest of Tombstone, Arizona, the site of the infamous Gunfight at the OK Corral and the home of tough-as-nails lawmen like Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson. This is being taped for broadcast tomorrow morning. My voice may sound weird to you because I’m speaking into a special microphone mask that muffles my voice so it can’t be heard by others, which might reveal our presence. I’ll explain why I need this in a moment.

“I’m here with my sound engineer, Georgie Wayne, who has done stevedore’s work helping me haul our gear up these mountain passes tonight. It was quite an exhausting hike for me, and I only carried a light backpack— Georgie carried the rest of our stuff, and I give him all the credit in the world for humping all this gear for me. My tree-hugging producer, Fand Kent, is back in the studios in Las Vegas—she doesn’t have the legs or the stomach for this kind of work.

“We’re way up in the Huachuca Mountains, at about six-to seven-thousand feet elevation. It’s rocky, with lots of trees and scrub brush—easy to hide in, as countless generations of fugitives, gangsters, Native Americans, and outlaws well know. Nearby Millers Pass rises to an elevation of over 9,400 feet. The air is cool, even though the daytime temperatures exceeded ninety degrees, and the air is very still. There is a very thin moon out tonight. It’s a perfect night for an ambush.

“But it’s us who will be doing the ambush. I’m here with Alpha Patrol of the American Watchdog Project, the world-famous group of volunteers from all over the United States who have taken it upon themselves to do what the federal government and the military are apparently unwilling or—in the case of the abortive attempt by Task Force TALON in southern California recently—unable to do: patrol and protect America’s borders. We’re here tonight because we have credible, actionable information gleaned from informants and from the Watchdog’s own network of watchers, both on the ground and in the air, that a large number of illegal migrants will be heading this way to cross into the United States. With me on a wireless microphone is the American Watchdog Project’s commander, Herman Geitz. Can you hear me okay, Commander?”

“Loud and clear, Mr. O’Rourke,” Geitz replied. He was almost a foot taller than O’Rourke, with a bushy beard