The former President horse-laughed, “I’ll admit, it makes me kinda’ happy too!”
“Excellent. Now, when you become Secretary General, and I think you will, you must use your powers of persuasion to achieve our next and most important goal.”
“And…that is?”
“The only way we’ll be able to end this global depression is if we harmonize the economies of all of the nations. That means moving toward one currency, and one central bank. The people of the world must understand that the global economy is so interconnected today, that it functions like one single engine. Mr. President, one engine cannot run with pistons of different sizes, all running at different speeds!”
Kosimos continued with his pitch. “Dave, I’m not proud of the fact that I accumulated billions of dollars by speculating on those currency differences. It’s not a productive use of capital, to say the least. But at least since then, I’ve tried to use my fortune to advance social justice around the globe, the entire globe. And now, as one who understands these economic differences, these imbalances, I’m telling you, the time has finally come—we must harmonize the world’s economies! And that means one currency, and one central bank. There’s no other way out of this depression.”
“Peter, I’m with you, but trust me on this: most Americans will never accept it. They’ll never go along with a central world bank. Not in a million years. It’s a complete non-starter.”
“Ah, but Mr. President, we already have it! At least, we have the nucleus, and that is enough to begin.”
“You mean the World Bank?”
“No, no—I mean the BIS, the Bank of International Settlements, in Geneva. It already exists—it just needs greater statutory authority.”
The two men came to a white marble bench along the path, near the shimmering blue lake waters. The former President said, “Let’s stop here. I could use a rest. You know, the old ticker’s not what it used to be.”
“Yes, of course.” Kosimos steered his motorized cart into a turn and stopped beside the end of the stone bench.
Whitman sat down, breathing heavily. “Peter, you know I’d love to see a world bank, a UN world bank, world money, global taxes, all of that. I just don’t think it’ll fly in the states.”
“Even now? Even with the American economy in a shambles? With twenty percent unemployment and hyperinflation? Dave, even Americans will see the need for a single world currency, if the idea is communicated effectively. And I think that you can sell the idea—in fact, I know that you can.” Kosimos chuckled, his weak laugh turning into a wheeze. “You might say I’m banking on it. Pardon my poor attempt at humor.”
“But how can I sell any new currency? The dollar’s become a joke, so why would Americans accept a new global currency to replace it? They don’t trust any paper money any more, not after the dollar collapse, and this blue buck fiasco. The federal government can pass all the laws it wants to, but they can’t make people trust paper money! Not after what they’ve been through. And outlawing gold, well, that was a huge mistake. That just showed how out of touch with reality Washington is, and how powerless they are. That was stupid, and I said so before the gold ban was passed.” Whitman leaned down and picked up a handful of pebbles, and began to toss them into the lake twenty feet away, sending out intersecting rings of ripples from each splash.
“I agree, that was a mistake, it was not well thought out. There could even be a place for a certain amount of gold backing for the new world currency. At least at first—as a selling point.”
“Peter, we can talk about finance later, I need to change the subject. I can’t stay, I can’t even drop by Wayne’s place—it’s too high profile. I’m speaking at UCLA tonight, and I’m getting right back on that jet as soon as we’re done here. Have you spoken with Orozco and Magón yet, about the Southwestern plan?”
“You mean the Pakistan Solution?”
“That’s what they’re calling it now?” the former President asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Informally, yes. The basic plan is as we’ve discussed. Voluntary population transfer, and an autonomous region status for the Southwest— but within the North American Community framework, of course. Yes, that seems to be the direction in which we’re moving. As far as the new boundary, the main sticking points are Denver and Las Vegas, and where the line will be drawn across Texas.”
Whitman adamantly stated, “We need to keep all of Colorado, Utah and Nevada, or it’ll never fly in Congress—and the President will veto it for sure. I know her mind on this—the political cost would be too high.”
“Orozco and Magón want Denver, Las Vegas and Houston,” countered Peter Kosimos. “They say that’s the price of peace in the rest of the United States.”
“Houston’s out of the question—the Texans will fight.”
“Mr. President, where the line is drawn across Texas will be part of the final negotiated settlement. The Anglos in Texas will just have to accept—”
“Peter, you don’t know the Texans! They won’t accept any settlement that puts the line east of Houston—there’s just no way. Houston and Dallas have to stay in the United States, and that’s non-negotiable. Tell them to draw the line at San Antonio, and make it a border town. Split it down the middle, we can live with that.”
“Take it easy, I’m only a messenger here, just an ‘honest broker.’ I’ll raise your concerns this afternoon with Orozco and Magón.”
“Do they really expect to get any of Colorado? If we hold out for the Utah and Colorado lines to be our new southern border—”
“They want to keep Denver,” said Kosimos. “A ‘Berlin solution’ has been discussed, with the state of Colorado remaining in the USA, but with Denver having a special status, with a corridor running south.”
“Houston, Denver and Las Vegas? They’re asking for too much! It’ll never fly.”
“Nothing has been carved in stone Mr. President—those are only the opening bids. This is just an informal preliminary conference, to explore the options. In any event, nothing will be decided before the Constitutional Convention in September.”
***
One hundred yards behind the former President and the billionaire currency speculator, a bodyguard holding a pair of powerful binoculars was scanning beyond them and across the lake, searching for even the slightest hint or sign of a concealed sniper. The chance of a sniper attack was minimal, because Kosimos and Whitman’s conversation by the side of the lake was unplanned, the spot being spontaneously chosen by both men. No sniper could have known the location ahead of time, and gotten into position in advance of their arrival. Besides, the lake was over a mile wide, nearly 2,000 yards, and therefore it was beyond the extreme limit of even the most skillful sniper, with the most advanced rifle. Behind the two men on the landward side, the meadows and woods swarmed with dozens of security men.
The marsh across the lake would have been a perfect hiding place for a sniper, so even considering the great distance the bodyguard was diligent in his search. He was a professional. Even so, he became mildly distracted by a stilt-legged white egret, walking in some shallows halfway across the lake, searching for a small fish to spear.
They were both searching, the bodyguard mused. He guessed that in the local food chain, these small egrets might also have to fear becoming the meal of yet another predator, perhaps a hawk or falcon. The bodyguard raised his binoculars, wondering if he might spot a highflying raptor. With his standard procedure adapted from searching for human enemies to searching for a predatory bird, he methodically quartered the empty blue sky above the lake, and was rewarded with a fleeting image of a passing …a passing what? What the heck was that? It was no bird, he knew that much! He tried to find his target again, scanning with his binoculars, while calling his own supervisor with his walkie-talkie, even though the man was sitting in an SUV only twenty yards away.
“Harry, have we got any air assets up?” There were several different security outfits represented here on the ranch today beside th
eir own: Wayne Parker’s, Peter Kosimos’s, the New Mexico “Falcon” Milicia, some Blackhawk helicopters from the state guard…maybe whatever he saw up there belonged to one of the other outfits. Maybe he was just being paranoid, and had only glimpsed the passing of a small plane at very high altitude. But the airspace above the Vedado Ranch was supposed to be closed today, except for the arriving jets…
He thumbed the send button on his radio again. “Harry, I just saw an airplane or a drone up there, I’m pretty sure. Anybody here have a drone up, over?” It couldn’t be ruled out. It might even be the Secret Service, miffed that their charge had slipped his leash for the afternoon. Maybe they had tracked him from LA, and were putting a protective “eye in the sky” above him.
31
The Cessna’s radio scanner jumped onto the new transmission. An unknown voice speaking in English flatly said, “…saw an airplane or a drone up there, I’m pretty sure. Anybody have a drone up, over?”
“We’re busted! They’re onto us,” said Alex.
“Oh crap. Sounds like they got it visual, not electronic.”
Then a different American voice replied to the first man. “I’ll check,
but I don’t think it’s ours. Let me make some calls. Let’s not go off half-
cocked, over.”
“Should we pull back our principals, over?”
“Let’s make sure of what we’ve got first. Break, break—tacnet four two—anybody on tacnet see an airplane or a drone up there?”
***
Waiting outside the jet hangars, Comandante Ramos was beckoned to his commo truck by Lieutenant Almeria, and he hurried over to the silver-gray Toyota SUV.
“What is it?” he asked, absorbing Almeria’s excitement.
“They’re talking about a drone. One of Parker’s security men may have spotted something above us. They don’t know if it’s friendly.”
“We were never briefed on a drone, were we?” asked Ramos.
“Absolutely not.”
“Then tell them that! I’ll get the pilots ready. If there’s a drone, then it has a controller. If it’s not on a satellite link, then it has a ground control that can’t be too far away. Try to find their transmitter, see if it’s nearby.”
“Sí Comandante! Immediately!”
“If you find the location, pass it to me on the primary Blackhawk frequency—Falcon Leader, aboard Puma 1. We’re going up!” Ramos strode over to a narrow strip of shade along the side of the last hangar, where some of his NCOs were sitting on folding chairs, a hundred yards from the four Blackhawks.
“Get ready boys, there might be something happening. Sergeants, move your squads to the helicopters.” Ramos had known that the Vedado Ranch meeting was of high importance to the state government, because his request that the helicopters be armed with machine guns had, to his surprise, been approved. On each side, between the pilots’ cockpit doors and the large sliding troop doors, the Blackhawks also had a one-meter square gunner’s port. Today, each open port was mounted with a belt fed M-60D 7.62mm machine gun, on a swinging pintle mount that hung just outside of the fuselage.
***
“Logan, let’s pack it up. Once they radio-direction-find us, we’re screwed. We’re not going to have time to recover the Pelican, just ditch it—we’ve got to haul ass.”
“Not yet,” said the pilot, feverishly entering commands on his laptop, data-linked in real-time to the UAV.
“Let it go, Logan!” There was urgency in Alex’s voice. “Set it to fly into the mountains, send it into a lake, it doesn’t matter, but let’s get the hell out of here! We’ve already got enough video.”
“No, wait—just give me another minute, just one more minute!”
On his laptop’s screen, Logan could see that Whitman and Kosimos were still sitting by the side of the lake, talking. He clicked his cursor’s crosshair on the stone bench, entering it as a target point on the GPS. Next, he pulled back the zoom lens to a wide view, and then panned and tilted the camera from its sideways slant angle, to directly forward. This gave him a conventional pilot’s perspective. Once that was done, he pushed the tiny manual control stick forward, putting the Pelican into a steep dive. From 5,000 feet above ground level, the UAV picked up speed until it was traveling at over 120 miles an hour, on a westward heading that took it away from the stone bench by the lake.
Thirty seconds later, he rolled the UAV onto its back and then pulled it into a downward loop, reversing its course and bringing it back toward the lake. He continued descending, watching the lake approaching ahead of the drone, until it was skimming above the water. Then he switched the Pelican back onto autopilot, and commanded it to “Go To” its last designnated GPS target point. The UAV’s microprocessor brain flew the craft at its maximum level flight velocity of 95 miles per hour, directly toward the stone bench.
Logan tapped his keyboard and his laptop’s screen split into several images. The top half showed his real-time pilot’s-eye view, forward from the nose of the UAV. The bottom of the screen showed an overhead GPS map, and the drone’s “virtual instrument panel.” On the GPS map, a tiny blinking triangle represented the Pelican’s current position, and a square icon showed the stone bench target at less than 4,000 feet away and closing. With the drone flying straight and level, at 2,000 feet out Logan switched back to manual control, looking “ahead” of the Pelican using the laptop’s video screen as his virtual window, until he visually picked up the two men sitting by the edge of the lake.
***
His temporary lead bodyguard jogged up and insisted, “Mr. President,
we need to move out right now, sir!”
“What’s the problem?” drawled Dave Whitman.
“We’re not certain. An aircraft, a drone—something’s up there.” The bodyguard pointed skyward.
Whitman shielded his eyes with his hand, and looked up as well. “Well I don’t see anything. Are you sure?”
“They fly too high; you won’t see it.”
“Are you sure it’s not one of ours? I mean, who’d be spying on me?” The former President smiled, and said, “Oh, I’ll bet it’s only the Secret Service. It just burns those boys up when I ditch ‘em like I did today.”
“Maybe we should just go, Mr. President,” said Peter Kosimos. He pulled on his electric wheelchair’s toggle control and it began to roll backward toward the service road. His white van was already driving toward them.
At that moment, they both saw and heard a tiny buzzing black dot in the distance across the lake. Before the thought could fully register, the dot grew in size until they could just make out wings on either side of it.
For long seconds they simply stared in fascination, unable to avert their gaze. At first, it seemed totally unconnected to them, an accident, or just a coincidence. It seemed so ridiculous, perhaps someone was playing a practical joke, preparing to fly over them and give them a fright. The plane’s distance was hard to estimate, it seemed so tiny, and therefore, still quite far away. Only gradually did its actual diminutive size become evident.
Whitman’s uncertainty about the plane’s size compounded his confusion over its distance, and its inbound speed. Was it a real airplane still some distance away, or just a model? Before he could decide whether to fall to the ground or run away, the plane had grown to a formidable size, and seemed to increase its speed exponentially as it closed the distance.
For another few moments, the former President considered running to the Suburban that had picked him up at the jet. Or maybe the big SUV would drive into the path of the little plane, blocking it? That, or the plane was only a toy, and it was going to fly harmlessly over him.
These ideas simultaneously jammed his mind, and he froze in place. The little plane swiftly grew to an enormous size, racing directly at him, until there was no time left. Now there was barely enough time to duck behind the only substantial protective cover available to him.
***
On Logan’s laptop, the lake’s shor
eline abruptly expanded to fill most of the screen’s video display. Fir trees upslope behind the two men enlarged and appeared to spread apart. Logan could see a pair of men still huddled by the stone bench, motionless. Dave Whitman was crouched directly behind Peter Kosimos, who was in his motorized wheelchair. Both men’s eyes were wide, their mouths hanging open, staring directly into the Pelican’s unblinking camera lens. Their well-known faces grew huge, filling the entire screen, and then disappeared. The video image flashed and went white for an instant, and then turned solid blue.
***
Until the discovery of the drone, Comandante Ramos had frankly been more concerned with the appearance of his men, than with the remote possibility that they would be required to engage in combat today. They had been wearing their brown berets instead of Kevlar helmets, with their camouflage uniforms starched and pressed. Their black paratrooper boots and their silver falcon insignias had gleamed in the sun. He had positioned them near the airport road running past the hangars, so that all of the arriving VIPs would get a good look at his elite Falcons, as they were driven from the runway to the Parker mansion.
The “fashion show” was over, Ramos grimly noted. The Falcons of Beta and Gamma platoons were divided into four squads of ten men each. Now each man was sitting on one of the metal pipe-frame seats in one of the four Blackhawks. Their turbine engines spooled up and their four blades began to turn until they were invisible rushing halos, shaking the helicopters like enormous washing machines. Their helmets were all securely chin-strapped; their M-16 rifles were pointed downward at the decks between their feet. Ramos was handed an extra flight crew aviation helmet to put on, connected by a wire to the aircraft’s radios and intercom. He slid the clear plastic face shield up out of the way, put on the helmet, and adjusted the chin microphone. He was crouched between the crew chief and the gunner, behind the pilots aboard Puma 1, when the message came from Lieutenant Almeria. His communications officer was calling on the state guard’s encrypted radio channel.
Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista Page 54