by Mike Maden
* * *
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.
Yes. Interesting.
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 recharged by either a ground-based or air-based laser, to the new Hitachi camera facial-recognition systems, capable of scanning 36 million biometric faces per second—equal to the entire population of Canada. A perfect combination for finding their target needles in human haystacks.
Ashley even managed to borrow one of NASA’s repurposed RQ-4 Global Hawks. With a range of over eight thousand miles and an integrated sensor suite of infrared, optical, and radar systems, the Global Hawk could provide reliable high-altitude surveillance capacity if needed.
All the data collected by these various systems would be bounced off of satellites and then pumped into a specially designated terminal at the Utah Data Center, the NSA’s massive, multibillion-dollar data collection, storage, and processing facility near Bluffdale.
Ashley’s strike plans also fell into place rapidly. Radar-jamming UAVs would provide electronic cover in Mexican airspace if needed. She was confident that Drone Command would be ready to launch by the time Myers gave her the command to strike. Once the first attack was launched, Ashley and her team had just sixty days to complete the mission in the unlikely event that War Powers would be invoked by Congress and funding withdrawn for operations. Her personal goal was to complete the mission in twenty.
39
Washington, D.C.
On the morning of August 11, the White House communications director made a surprise announcement to the networks, notifying C-SPAN and the other news media outlets that President Myers was going to make a major policy address that evening at the unusual hour of 11 p.m. EST.
When asked what the announcement was, or why it was being held at such a late hour, the director replied, “No comment,” because she did not, in fact, have any idea what the speech was all about, which was highly unusual, and even more startling was the lack of a written transcript of the speech, which was typically provided several hours before any presidential broadcast so that both pundits and producers could prepare. Speculation was rampant.
Myers had been famously frustrated by the petty politics of state government as a governor, but that was high school locker room stuff compared to what one female senator termed “the jail shower free-for-all cocksmanship” that was Washington, D.C. Perhaps Myers was tired of the whole mess and craved the simplicity of just being the CEO of her own privately held firm, or so the speculation ran.
“Distrac
ted” was the word most frequently used to describe her of late, but the frequency of use was due primarily to the fact that journalists were among the least original thinkers on the planet. The pseudopsychologists suggested that the death of her son had taken a deeper psychic toll on her than she or anyone else had imagined and that she was entering into a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome. They further speculated that the stress of the office hadn’t given her the time to grieve, but they were unaware of the fact that Myers had refused to allow her grief to be televised for political gain.
Vice President Greyhill was on a trade mission in Toronto when he was asked by the Canadian media about the president’s announcement, and he also issued a “no comment.” That was because he, too, lacked any insight, and his own attempts to secure a private meeting or even a phone call with Myers were politely rebuffed by Jeffers. Greyhill wondered if the oil rig catastrophe had finally overwhelmed Myers and her staff. He’d long felt that the office was far above her limited capabilities and had raised that very issue in the primaries. She was an ingénue when it came to international politics, and practically a rube off the turnip truck when it came to the Beltway.
Greyhill had inherited both his father’s patrician good looks and his Senate seat, but it was his late mother’s Calvinist conviction that he was predestined for greatness that drove him. Why was he standing in a hotel room in Toronto instead of in the White House?
He should have won the primary. Greyhill was the first one to label Myers “the Ice Queen” for the pain and suffering her budget freeze proposal would cause. Had caused, he reminded himself. But his handlers—the same tired old cadre of overpaid political hacks perennially hired by the GOP establishment—had told him to remain “above the fray” and trust their messaging. Meanwhile, Myers’s upstart campaign ran a series of brilliant TV ads that showed her sitting around a kitchen table with a single mom, or a widow, or a young family and letting them talk about how they had to balance their checkbooks at the end of every month no matter how tough times got. “Why can’t Congress do the same?” each of them asked at the end. Why hadn’t his team thought of that?
Greyhill had run against the Democrats in the primary while Myers ran against Congress. Ironically, Greyhill counted many liberal Democrat congressmen as his closest friends and colleagues, but he loathed Myers, never more so than now.
For the last several weeks Greyhill had been completely cut out of Myers’s inner circle and banished to the hinterland of international PR junkets, dignitaries’ funerals, and military base closings to get him away from her. He knew it was because she was hiding something from him. But what?
The banishment had sucked all of the juice out of him. He felt as dry and angry as old kindling. The secrecy of tonight’s speech fueled an irrational rage in him. Greyhill was determined to find a way to run Myers out of office before her term was up.
* * *
Senator Diele was forced to wait like the ordinary mortals to find out what Myers had in mind. He feigned a lack of interest to friends and colleagues during the day of the announcement, but when 10:59 p.m. rolled around, his keister was firmly planted on the leather sofa in his luxury suite at the Watergate Hotel, eyes fixed to his big-screen television.
Diele had been desperate to sway her to his way of thinking. He was a formidable ally and an unrelenting opponent. Like all congressmen, his reelection prospects hinged on what he could bring back home to his state, and like a dutiful milkman, he had been delivering the goods for over thirty years.
As any freshman political science major knew, the only way that every congressman could bring home the bacon was to be sure there were enough pigs at the trough to be slaughtered. Every Washington politician—liberal or conservative, urban or rural, Egyptian-American female or eighth-generation WASP—had the same goal: get reelected by giving their constituents whatever they wanted. Period. The cruel genius of the crushing national debt was that it was, in reality, the largest election campaign slush fund the world had ever seen. All of that borrowed money had one singular purpose: to keep incumbents in office. Every politician paid lip service to the crippling effect the escalating debt would have on the future generations who would be the ones forced to pay it all back. But the brutal fact was that most incumbent politicians couldn’t care less about future generations because future generations couldn’t vote.
Congressional constituents were nearly as corrupt as their representatives. All of the voter hand-wringing about the deficit faded once they were confronted with the possibility that their own fat subsidy checks, cushy government jobs, generous federal contracts, or arcane university research grants could all go away if the deficit was reduced by a single penny. Spend less and somebody got less, and that made voters mad, and mad voters scared the hell out of politicians.
Diele was happy to navigate those tricky waters for Myers, but for a price, of course. His state was disproportionately more dependent upon government spending—particularly defense spending—than other states. If she had been willing to preserve his piece of the rice bowl rather than demanding that everyone sacrifice equally, he would have gone to the mattresses for her. But she was a stone-cold bitch and she could rot in hell as far as he was concerned.
Diele took another sip of his Scotch. He kept the talking news heads on mute. They were just rambling about what the speech might be about. Or more precisely, the airheads were reading aloud from the teleprompter the opinions of the real news writers who were expressing what they thought the president might be speaking about but who were too ugly to appear on camera themselves.
The news anchor then ran a clip of Myers at the oil rig platform. Diele had to admit, she was a good-looking woman, even in a hard hat.
40
Washington, D.C.
At precisely 11 p.m. EST, President Myers appeared on Diele’s television screen. She wore an elegant but understated blue business suit. An American flag was draped prominently behind her as she sat at her desk in the Oval Office. A bust of Teddy Roosevelt was also conspicuously displayed off to one side.
“Good evening, my fellow Americans. I’m addressing you tonight because of a number of recent developments that, taken together, pose a significant security threat to our nation. Beginning with the cross-border assault in El Paso and extending all the way to the Houston oil fire, it has become increasingly clear that the United States faces a new strategic threat. The question is, what exactly is the nature of that threat and how should we deal with it?
“As most of you realize, our country is still wrestling with the economic and physical effects of fighting the War on Terror for more than a decade. There are any number of arguments for or against that war, but no one can doubt the bravery and sacrifice of our men and women on the frontlines of the battlefield, many of whom paid the ultimate price to help secure our nation against another catastrophic attack by Islamist extremists. Thousands of our soldiers have died and tens of thousands have been wounded, physically and mentally, by a seemingly endless war that has cost our nation two trillion dollars to prosecute so far, and perhaps another two to four trillion as we care for the brave men and women who have suffered for their service.
“I was elected, in part, to honor that sacrifice in blood and treasure, and to maintain constant vigilance against any future attacks by our enemies, but the American people have also made it clear that the era of sending American soldiers into battle in faraway lands is over. While we will always honor our treaty commitments with our allies, we are no longer willing to shoulder the primary defense burden for those who are capable of defending themselves.
“My administration is committed to what has been termed the Powell Doctrine, the tenets of which are well known. Is a vital national security interest threatened? Do we have a clear, attainable objective? Have the risks and costs been fully and frankly analyzed? Have all other nonviolent policy means been fully exhausted? Is there a plausible exit strategy to avoid endless entanglement? Have the consequences of our
action been fully considered?”
Myers’s face softened.
“Please forgive me for what must sound like another long-winded political speech. But it’s terribly important that I share with you my thoughts tonight and that we speak honestly with each other. It’s the failure to speak boldly and clearly about the challenges that face us that has brought our nation to the brink of economic and social disaster. With your help, and with the help of the courageous congressmen and senators from both parties who have joined with us, we’ve finally managed to begin to put our fiscal house in order. The budget freeze that’s been put in place is projected to slow the growth of federal spending and eventually balance the federal budget within ten years. It will require constant vigilance and iron-willed discipline to maintain the freeze, but no more vigilance or discipline than many of you have been forced to exercise as a result of the devastating job losses and wage reductions of the last decade.