True Allegiance

by Ben Shapiro

  For some reason, that small measure of justice made Brett feel just slightly better for a moment. Then he realized the enormity of the situation, the enormity of the loss.

  It had all been for nothing. The staffer who had bled out on the roof. The servicemen and women who had died in the alleyways. The whole damn operation up in flames. And they hadn’t even been able to successfully evacuate the ambassador.

  He didn’t have time to mourn—and he wouldn’t have even if he did. Feldkauf, after all, was an asshole. His first order of business had to be setting his arm to prevent infection. Then he’d figure out what to do.

  He looked around for materials to dress the wound, spotted a first aid kit still hanging on the wall. It would do for the gunshot wound. At least he’d live until morning.

  But he still needed to set the arm. He didn’t know how to do it. All he knew was that his arm was sticking out at a peculiar angle, and that he needed to fix that. As far as he could tell, there was no internal bleeding—the arm was swollen, but it wasn’t bulging. But if he left the broken bone hanging around inside, it would cut an artery sooner or later.

  Brett backed himself up until he was about two feet from one of the walls. Then he gripped his upper arm tightly, took a deep breath, and smashed his hand against the wall. The pain shot up his arm like a thunderbolt, making him gasp; involuntarily he screamed. Before he could think about it again, he smashed his hand into the wall again—this time, he heard the arm crack back into place. He lay back on the floor, his chest heaving, his stomach cold with sweat, tears of pain in his eyes.

  Now, he thought, let’s stabilize this son of a bitch.

  He’d seen temporary splints before. All he needed was two straight sticks to place on either side of his arm and some cloth to tie them in place. The cloth wasn’t hard to come by. The rods were.

  Brett scooted around the floor on his butt, looking around for something that could serve the basic purpose. The Taliban had done a thorough job of cleaning the place out—they had made their living from scavenging for so long that they were sure to take everything of value. He’d been lucky just to find the first aid kit.

  Half an hour later, he was still looking. He hadn’t eaten or drunk in twelve hours, and he’d suffered a gunshot wound and a broken arm. His body was crying out for sleep, for reprieve, for any sort of relief.

  Then he spotted it, gleaming dully in the dark structure.

  Feldkauf’s briefcase, still connected to his corpse. He clawed at the floor with both hands, the energy flowing through his veins. It was an old-school pop-top briefcase, a black leather piece with steel ringing the inside in strips. It had a combination lock on the front with three digits.

  Brett tried the combination already in place. Nothing.

  He sat for a moment, thinking. Then he tried the only thing he could think of: 266. B.F.F.

  Miraculously, it popped open.

  A Glock. A passport. Stacks of afghanis, stacks of dollars. A bag of a sticky, blackish substance—opium.

  And a Xerox copy of a map, with two sets of coordinates. Longitude and latitude. 51.4231. 35.6961.

  Iran.

  41.440. 34.234.

  Iraq.

  Brett knew what it meant.

  Brett had known of the CIA’s discovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq for years. Everyone on the inside had known. The media had reported that the government had lied, that somehow, all the world’s greatest intelligence agencies had been dead wrong. But that wasn’t the case. Hussein had smuggled some of the weapons out of the country to Syria; others had been buried in the desert.

  Beneath those coordinates.

  And now they were in Iran.

  Thanks to Ambassador Beauregard Frederick Feldkauf.

  “Feldkauf, you son of a bitch,” Brett muttered. “You sold us out.”

  Then he passed out.

  Washington, DC

  “At first, the numbers didn’t make sense to me either, Mr. President,” the young analyst explained. “The airlines have been doing well this year. This precipitous stock drop doesn’t make sense. Yeah, some of their balance sheets could be a bit stronger, but there’s nothing to indicate a recession coming.”

  Prescott looked at the nerd. He hated beating around the bush, and this guy with the knockoff suit from Joseph A. Bank and the pocket protector was doing just that. He seemed self-assured—self-assured as most cranks were. Prescott had never heard of him. But with General Bill Collier sitting right there, Prescott couldn’t just blow this irritating asshole off. He had to at least appear interested.

  Thankfully, that was his specialty.

  “So,” Prescott said, “what’s your take?”

  The analyst cleared his throat. “Let me start at the beginning. You remember 9/11?”

  Prescott nodded amiably.

  “Okay, so in the couple of months right before 9/11, there was a huge jump in currency in circulation. That probably means that somebody—somebody with an awful lot of money in domestic bank accounts, for example—cashed out in order to avoid blowback after the attacks. See, they figured that if they were tied to the attack, their bank accounts would be frozen. So they preemptively grabbed their money and took it out of the bank.

  “But that wasn’t the end of the story.” The analyst pushed his glasses up on his nose, his face reddening with his growing excitement. Prescott stifled a yawn. “Right before the attacks, somebody started shorting airline stocks.”

  Prescott’s look of bewilderment was Tommy Bradley’s cue to jump in—the chief of staff knew that Prescott would never admit to not understanding something. Part of his job involved taking that hit. “In English, please?” said Tommy.

  “Shorting is where the price of, say, a share of McDonald’s stock is now at $20. I tell you that I’m going to sell you stock in McDonald’s next week for $10. Great deal for you, right? So here’s my plan: I’ll borrow a stock from the president. Then, I’ll wait until next week, hope the stock is at $6, and sell the stock to you at $10. I’ll buy a second stock and then go back to the president and give it back to him. I make $4. Now, the simple act of me selling you that option to buy for next week drives down the stock price, because I’m inventing a whole new supply of stock that doesn’t even exist yet. So it’s sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

  “Well,” continued the analyst, “that’s what happened in the days before 9/11. There were a huge number of foreign reports about people seeking to borrow shares. The volatility in the airline shares jumped 30 percent between September 4 and September 7. Then, boom, September 11. The airlines get slammed. Stocks go through the floor. Somebody makes a bundle. Somebody who knew in advance.”

  Prescott leaned forward. “So what are you trying to say?”

  “What he’s trying to say,” growled Collier, “is that we’re about to get hit. Hard.”

  “And,” said Prescott, turning to the analyst, “you think that this is going to happen soon?”

  The analyst shrugged. “Could happen any time. I’m just picking up some signals.”

  Prescott thumbed his chin thoughtfully. “Seems to me,” he said slowly, “that the 9/11 Commission report rejected all of that.” Tommy found himself surprised. He didn’t know Prescott had read the report.

  “That report was flawed. Knew it at the time. Everybody did,” said Collier.

  “And just what are your credentials, again?” Prescott said to the analyst.

  The analyst’s eyes moved to the floor. “Well, you know,” he mumbled, “I was an investment advisor.”

  Prescott’s eyes flashed. “And this makes you an expert on economic terrorism?”

  Collier broke in again. “Mr. President, this information should be fully analyzed, tracked down. Just for the sake of covering our bases.”

  “And just whom do you believe is moving this money around?”


  “The money has been gathered in anonymous accounts. They’re known as dark pools. We don’t know who exactly holds the cash, but we have some guesses. The Iranians. The Chinese…”

  “Guesses?” The president leaned forward. “You do understand that we have a very valuable trading relationship with China. If we move forward with a covert investigation, what are the chances the Chinese find out?”

  Collier shrugged. “I’d say fifty-fifty.”

  Prescott spoke slowly. Like Collier was a third-grader. Which, in Prescott’s mind, he essentially was. “Fifty-fifty. So you want me to risk our entire trade relationship with China—a country whose way of life is based on honor—based on a hunch from a random analyst with a background as an investment advisor?”

  The general grunted. “All I’m saying is that we ought to check it out, sir. If only to cover our asses should something go wrong.” Collier hoped Prescott would take the broad hint.

  Prescott didn’t. “Well, I disagree. This discussion is tabled.” He stood up. “Gentlemen, thank you for your time.”

  The abruptness of the move startled the analyst, who jumped to his feet, stammering. “But Mr. President—this could mean …”

  “I know what it could mean. But so could a thousand other things. Do you have any idea how many intelligence briefings cross my desk? I do appreciate your diligence. But I’ll have to have my people look into your claims.” He gripped the analyst’s hand. Hard. “And I’ll insist that you keep our meeting today under wraps. Can’t be too careful, with the things the press will print.” The Prescott smile emerged. Bill Collier felt his chest grip up with anger. But the meeting was over.

  Fifteen minutes later, Prescott was on the phone with the Chinese premier, who quickly acquiesced to the request for a major bond buy by the Chinese government. Prescott thanked him profusely, promised him that the United States understood the position of the Chinese government with respect to military exercises in the South China Sea, but asked that the exercises take place sporadically rather than all at once, and then hung up. And they say the Chinese are tough to deal with, Prescott thought to himself.

  Seconds later, his intercom buzzed.

  “Mr. President?” said his secretary, a hot little handpicked blonde number named Marissa. “I’ve got the governor of Texas for you.”

  “Can we take a rain check?” Prescott felt too high to be brought down by the fat turd from the Lone Star State, that arrogant, bullheaded used car salesman. He hated Bubba Davis—who named their child Bubba, aside from dumb hicks from the South?—and didn’t want to hear his drawl ruining his day.

  “He says it’s urgent, Mr. President.”

  Prescott groaned and picked up the headset. “Put him through.”

  The line beeped once. “Governor Davis, you are on with the president of the United States.”

  “Mr. President.” Davis’s voice was thick with anger.

  “What can I do for you, Bubba?”

  “You could send me some troops to the border, is what you could do. I’m sure you saw on the news about my staffer.”

  Prescott kicked off his shoes, put his feet on the desk. “Yes, sir, I sure did.” He found himself accidentally blurring into a drawl of his own when he talked with the rednecks. “Tragic. Just tragic. Not sure what anybody could’ve done about it, though.”

  “You could have done something about it. You still can. It’s an act of war.”

  “It’s not an act of war, Governor, if it’s not by a foreign government.”

  A pause. Then the storm. “Horseshit, Mr. President. You know as well as I do that the Mexican government is run by the cartels. And they killed one of my people. One of your people. Came right across the border in that helicopter and shot her right in front of my chief of staff. I got dead kids washing up on the Rio Grande and you’re slammin’ me in the press for tryin’ to do something about it. What in the Sam Hill is wrong with you?”

  Now Prescott’s ire was up. It was one thing to disagree with him. It was another to lecture him. Nobody got away with that shit. Nobody.

  “You put troops on that border without my go-ahead, they’re not going to have any power,” he said. “You can give them the power to arrest, but as you know, anyone they arrest will then be processed by my Immigration and Customs Enforcement department. And we aren’t interested in noncriminal undocumented immigrants.” Prescott could almost hear Davis bristle at the euphemism. Good. He continued, “You can do what you want, but in the end, it’s our choice anyway.”

  “But at least they won’t be runnin’ around the state in their helicopters. Power to arrest means power to fire on those who are a threat.”

  Prescott’s voice went ice cold. “Let me be perfectly clear, Governor Davis. Your boys shoot anybody, and I’ll have my DOJ dogs down there sniffing around you like you’re a bitch in heat.”

  Another pause. “And then what?”

  Prescott was thunderstruck. “And then what? And then I arrest your boys, shut down your operation, and bring charges against you for violation of federal law. That’s what.”

  A long pause, this time. Softly. “And then what?”

  “I don’t have time for this bullshit, Bubba. You cross me, and I promise, you’ll see the inside of a cell for a very, very long time.”

  Davis’s voice came through solidly. “I read you loud and clear, Mr. President.”

  The phone clicked dead.

  Prescott buzzed the intercom. “Marissa, get me Jazz.” That was his nickname for Jasmine Jacks, the national security advisor, his longtime political mentor.

  He could hear her sexy fingers manipulating the phone. “She’s in the Situation Room, Mr. President. And she says you might want to get down there. Something about Brett Hawthorne.”

  Austin, Texas

  Brett had lost weight.

  Funny that that would be the first thought to cross Ellen’s mind when she saw him on television, but it was. He was always so self-conscious about the four or five pounds around his midsection he couldn’t shake, what he liked to call the Famed Hawthorne Underbelly. That had to be gone. He looked gaunt. That jutting jawline she loved to kiss looked like skin stretched taut over bone. He looked like death. That was her first thought.

  Her second thought was that this could not be happening.

  Her man. The man she’d married and who had cared for her and who had provided her strength and to whom she’d given her entire life—a man she had never questioned about his honor, even when the front pages of every major newspaper in America smeared it—with a knife to his throat.

  She was alone, watching him. He was alone, at the mercy of his enemies. This couldn’t be real.

  But there he was, his eyes staring out stolidly at the camera, wearing an orange jumpsuit, his face a mask of impassivity. Ellen knew one version of that look—the stubborn look that came into his eyes when they had an argument and he set his mind that he was in the right. When that look came over his face, the argument was over, even if he was dead wrong.

  But the glassy stare that masked Brett’s stubbornness—that she hadn’t seen before. It had to be trained into you, she imagined. Nobody looked like that naturally.

  Of course, it wasn’t exactly natural to have a knife to your throat, either. And that’s what the networks showed over and over, on a loop: Brett, on his knees, in that orange jumpsuit, with a man swathed totally in black, his face wreathed in material, a knife in his hand and at Brett’s throat. He spoke with a British accent, although the facecloth made it impossible to know whether or not the voice came from him.

  It all felt surreal. They’d released videos like this before. But never of Ellen’s husband.

  “The blood of innocents is on your hands, President Prescott,” the masked figure stated in monotone laced with fanatical passion. “As you bomb our innocents, so we strike at the th
roats of your people. In the name of Allah, the most high, we will send you your general’s head if you fail to withdraw your bombers within forty-eight hours.”

  The video cut to black.

  Then, the face of the president, grim and obviously weary: “We will not bow before terrorists. “

  The media didn’t take long to descend on Ellen’s home outside of Austin, looking for comment. She obliged them, because she knew Brett would want her to. He had always told her that to run from the media was a waste of time—they’d print something anyway, true or false. So she told them that she wouldn’t beg, and neither would her husband. While members of the administration urged her to issue a plea to the terrorists for mercy, she refused. She knew the look in her husband’s eye well enough to know that pleading with terrorists was out of the question. And she knew it was useless anyway.

  They would kill him.

  She had seen the end of videos like this before. The first installment represented the threat; the second installment, invariably, represented the fruition of that threat. The jagged trunks of human beings, the sawed-off heads that looked too much like a horror movie and not enough like real life.

  Her husband.

  She reached out to the television, stroked his cheek. The cheek that had laid on her breast the first night they made love. The cheek that she had wet with tears the night of the miscarriage. His eyes blinked rapidly as she stroked the screen, almost as if he could feel her touch him across the world.

  She felt tears well in her own eyes.

  She couldn’t cry. Not yet.

  So she went to work as usual.

  When she arrived at the capitol, she made straight for the governor’s office. The halls were thronged with angry Texans—and angry Texans were anything but subtle. Some carried signs tacked to wooden planks: “CLOSE THE BORDER!” “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!” “PROTECT YOUR PEOPLE!” She edged her way past one burly linebacker of a man, wearing a cowboy hat and a gun, which was perfectly legal in the state. That was reason enough for Ellen to love the Lone Star State. There wouldn’t be any random shootings in this capitol building anytime soon, even if the media made it seem as though every civilian with a gun represented a threat to public safety. For every nut with a gun, she knew, there were ten willing to put him down.