Ben Shapiro - True Allegiance

“What?”

Bradley sighed. “I said you’ll have to trust us. Can you hold off for forty-eight hours? I promise, it’ll be worth your while.”

Levon paused for dramatic effect—he wanted Bradley to remember he was in control. Then he answered, “Sure, Mr. Bradley. Sure. Anything for the president. Love that man.”

“Thank you, Levon, and he sends his regards.” The line clicked dead.

And Levon smiled.

THE TROOP MOVEMENT ACROSS THE Mexican border began early in the morning with helicopter incursions into Mexican territory. The intel provided by captured border-crossers proved accurate based on the aerial photographs taken by state-owned drones, redirected across the border. The Apache attack helicopters veered low over Ciudad Juarez and fired directed rockets at a small duplex on the outskirts of the city. It went up in flames; Governor Davis watched the real-time broadcast, yelping as the duplex disappeared in a puff of smoke and dust.

“There goes one of the bastards,” he smiled. That bastard was one of the leaders of the Juarez Cartel.

That was just the first attack of the morning. Over the next two hours, Texas National Guard attack helicopters would raze several buildings and strafe a small convoy of vehicles attempting to escape. The concentration of troops on the border made it nearly impossible for the cartels to try any cross-border action, and Ellen had ensured antiaircraft ordinance availability should any unforeseen black helicopters attempt to land on the American side of the border again.

That night was quiet—the quietest it had been for months.

The next day, though, residents of El Paso woke to a terrifying sight: a National Guardsman hanging dead from a billboard in the center of town. Painted in broad block letters were the words “PLATA O PLOMO”— silver or lead. In other words, pay us, or die.

Governor Davis wasn’t in the mood to pay.

He ordered an immediate full-scale investigation, and he put Ellen in charge. She knew that nobody had crossed the border after the Texas National Guard incursions. That meant that the cartel had agents on the American side of the border.

For years, there had been rumors of significant drug cartel inroads into the city. Not just the civilian infrastructure—the city government. Just a few months earlier, nine former law enforcement officers were convicted on federal drug charges. The attorney general had said, “This creeping corruption resembles third-world country practices that erode the social fabric of our communities.”

Drugs, money, corruption. The triangle couldn’t be broken. And so the cartels had honeycombed their way through the force, using people with access to the border to work across the border.

Ellen acted swiftly, placing National Guard troops in the local police centers, increasing security along the border. Within hours, the Border Patrol had caught two men attempting to flee into Mexico. After questioning, Ellen had them detained indefinitely pending further investigation into their activities the night of the hanging. And she redoubled deployments to the border to stop any further infiltrations and deter any attempts by collaborators to escape into Mexico.

All of it was good policy. None of it made for good pictures on front pages around the country. And Ellen was stunned by the magnitude of the coverage.

The media coverage exploded with a protest on the other side of the Rio Grande: nothing but women and children. As the sun came up, at least a hundred women stood, carrying toddlers and babies, waving their hands and screaming for the National Guard to let them cross. The National Guardsmen stood their ground. They didn’t point their weapons—Ellen and Davis had agreed there would be no such activity, for both moral and media reasons—but they looked threatening enough in their uniforms, young, strong, square-jawed. The cameras zoomed in on their impassive faces, contrasting them with the tear-stained faces of young children standing in the heat of the day.

It wasn’t hard to gather who had tipped off the cameras: one of the biggest magnates in Mexico owned several major media outlets in the United States. Ellen wasn’t surprised at the number of cameras showing up—obviously, this was a big story. Still, she resented the intrusion: there had been zero cameras for the murdered National Guardsman, but get a few dozen crying women on the border with their kids, and the media had a field day.

The cameras eventually found their way to Ellen for comment. “We will maintain the security of the people of Texas,” she said. “Our immigration services have not screened any of the people out there. We’re sure most of them are wonderful people who want to come here and work and build a life without taxpayer help, but we simply don’t know who they are, and without screening them, we’re not going to open our borders to anyone who wants to cross. We have the body of a National Guardsman hanging from a billboard that tells the story of what we get when we don’t check those who cross the border.”

The headlines hit almost immediately: “Texas Governor’s Top Aide Says Immigrant Women, Children Pose Security Threat.” Ellen could have slapped herself—she should have known better than to give them any material they could misuse. Then again, what material wouldn’t they have misused? She vowed to ignore any calls coming from a media number.

Still, the news from Texas remained tertiary. And that meant that the operation to clean out drug cartel operatives in Ciudad Juarez continued to operate on the quiet. The Mexican military knew enough to avoid a significant confrontation with the National Guard; there were still honest members among its ranks who wanted the area cleaned of cartel influence. Each day, small groups of National Guardsmen raided Ciudad Juarez, usually by motor vehicle convoys across the border. The cartel members had picked up on the nature of the offensive action and had inserted themselves into heavily civilian areas, cutting down on the ability of Texas forces to strike without facing the prospect of urban warfare. Now, more dangerous search and destroy missions had been authorized.

The American side of the border remained silent.

Until it wasn’t.

The first news of the massacre hit the airwaves three days after the Ciudad Juarez raids began. According to early reports, six people, women and children, had been found dead on the Mexican side of the border. They were protesters, and their bodies had been riddled with bullets. Over the course of the morning, the number increased: six, then twelve, then finally twenty-six people, all women and children, found shot to death on the banks of the Rio Grande. Everyone figured it for a drug cartel hit.

Then the footage came out.

Ellen saw it on the evening news, as the network anchor intoned, “What you are about to watch is very graphic. Younger viewers are advised not to watch.” She then cut to grainy, close-range video of a man in a National Guard uniform, from behind, walking up to a group of tents. “Get out of thar,” the National Guardsman said in a thick Texas accent. “Get out of thar, you little wetbacks.”

A few children, rubbing their eyes, came scurrying out of their tents, their mothers following. Seeing the barrel of a gun, they raised their hands. The screen went white with the fired shots: flash after flash, again and again. When the night vision calmed, the smoking bodies of two dozen innocents lay on the ground.

The screen cut back to the anchor. “Our sources on the ground tell us that this tape has not yet been verified,” she said. “No one has yet claimed credit for this horrific attack. Calls for comment to Ellen Hawthorne, chief of staff to Governor Bubba Davis, have gone unreturned.”