an FBI Hostage Rescue Team or a police SWAT unit to take him down. We’ll need either a Delta Force company, an entire SEAL team, a Marine Special Purpose Force platoon—or
The President paused, looking carefully at Jefferson, studying him, trying to think of another question that the senior Army non-commissioned officer wasn’t prepared for, but finally gave up. “Tom, I want a video conference with the Attorney General, FBI Director DeLaine, and Major Richter as soon as possible.”
“Sir, I would advise against that,” Kinsly said evenly. “The assaults on the federal officers, the killing of that migrant, and the multiple killings at Rampart One are still fresh in people’s minds. Now you want to put those robots on the streets and give them an FBI badge…”
“And a judge’s warrant,” the President added. “That’s exactly what I want to do.” To Jefferson, he said, “Sergeant Major, I’m not relieving you of responsibility for Task Force TALON. You keep them under tight control, or you bring them in and shut them down. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Jefferson replied.
At that moment the President’s assistant entered the Oval Office and gave Kinsly a folder. The Chief of Staff reviewed the cover letter quickly, his eyes widening in concern as he read. “Tom…?”
“Transcript of another videotape message by that Comandante Veracruz guy,” Kinsly announced, “distributed to several U.S. and international media outlets, reporting details of the killings in Arizona and calling for a general uprising and retaliation against the U.S. government. The cat’s out of the bag, Mr. President, and Veracruz announced it before we did—that’ll make it look even worse for us.”
The Oval Office erupted into sheer bedlam. Kinsly gave the folder to Jefferson, who speed-read through the transcript. “Detailed, accurate account…no doubt in my mind the Consortium, or Veracruz himself, staged the ambush.”
“That’s absurd!” Kinsly said. “We’re not going to respond to this horrible incident by stating that Veracruz allowed
“It’s the only explanation, sir,” Jefferson said.
“How could Veracruz do it? What did he do…analyze every weapon those vigilantes carried and used only those same weapons to shoot the migrants?” Kinsly asked. “That’s stretching credibility, Jefferson.”
“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,
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
“If it
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—
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