Mike Maden - Drone

Brian Heppner had just been SWATed—a dangerous trick used by extremist crazies to harass political opponents back in 2012. The tactic was ugly and effective. Just call in a gun-related emergency to 911 and the dispatcher would automatically send in the SWAT team. That way you let the cops do your intimidation for you, and your opponents lived in sleepless fear of another break-in for the next six weeks.

The LEO community was on high alert. Every call was taken as seriously as possible. What else could they do but respond?

According to the reports he’d received, Donovan knew it was the Bravos behind all of it. There had been at least fifty-three SWATings across the country in the last hour, all of the emergency calls reporting the same thing. Thank God there had been only two fatalities so far.

So now the bastards were letting us do the terrorizing for them, Donovan thought. It was only 7:18 in the morning, but Donovan uncorked his bottle of Bushmills and took a sip anyway. It was going to be another long damn day and he dreaded calling Myers with this new round of bad news.

When was it going to end?

Dearborn, Michigan

Pearce’s tablet flashed. Skype was ringing in.

“Anything?” Pearce asked, knowing the answer.

“Nothing. The poor bastard hasn’t even left the house since your visit. Even has his groceries delivered now.”

“No calls? No contacts?”

“Zip, zilch, nada,” Stella said.

Pearce believed her. She was his best drone pilot, and he’d put her on drone surveillance over Babak Ghorbani’s house since the day he and Johnny had paid the writer a visit. Stella had cut her teeth on surveillance missions. After getting arrested for shoplifting in her junior year at USC, Stella was hauled before a judge. Noting she was a major in video-game design, he gave her the old “army or jail” offer. She took the army offer and six months later was flying Israeli-built RQ-7 Shadows over Afghanistan, eventually logging over two hundred combat missions before her hitch was up.

“You want me to stay on him?” she asked.

“Go ahead and shut it down. It’s a bust,” Pearce said, logging off of Skype.

Washington, D.C.

Jeffers scratched his head, frustrated. “You’ve got to give them something, Margaret. The midterm elections are just three months away and your congressional supporters are really feeling the heat.”

“Give them something? How about a backbone? I can lend them mine, I suppose.” Myers was frustrated, to say the least.

The “Day Without a Mexican” strike had stretched into an entire week, and it was just one more hurricane in the storm of chaos that had enveloped the nation. Myers thought it would be helpful if someone in her own party would stand beside her during the current debacle, but she was out of luck. Many had privately assured her that they were in complete support of her policies, even though publicly they were being forced to say something different, or nothing at all. That kind of self-serving duplicity was almost more painful than the outright betrayal that Diele and others had openly displayed. At least Diele was completely honest in his contempt for her and her ideas.

“We’re several months away from building an efficient technical solution for border crossing. Why not ease up a little until the technology falls into place? Take a little pressure off, build up a little goodwill?” Jeffers asked.

“That’s a great suggestion. Tell me, how many more Bravos do we need to let cross before you think La Raza will invite me to their annual gala?”

“That’s not fair, Margaret. Consensus is how democratic governments work.” Jeffers was frustrated, too. Myers had no idea of what he had to put up with to keep her shielded from the long knives slashing all around her. The only good news lately was that there hadn’t been any more airport attacks.

“Consensus? How about the national interest? Just once, let Congress rally around what’s best for the country instead of what’s most likely to get them reelected. That’s the only kind of ‘consensus’ I can actually support.”

Jeffers took a deep breath to calm down. “Everything’s a damn mess right now. Like a slow-motion car wreck.”

“The ‘mess’ we’re in is proof we’re doing the right thing. The ‘mess’ we’re in is exactly why my predecessors haven’t tried to tackle these issues before—too difficult, too complicated, too costly, too hard. But doing the right thing is always harder and more complicated than doing nothing.”

“You know, they’re calling you La Bruja Mala in the Hispanic media because you make good people disappear.”

“I’ve been called worse than a witch before. If they’re reduced to calling me names, it means they’re out of political arguments.”

“Or they’ve moved beyond them.” Jeffers sighed. He knew he couldn’t win this battle with her.

“We’re only a few weeks into this. Tell our ‘supporters’ to man up a little. Casualties have been relatively light, and our law enforcement resources are just now fully deployed and focused. With any luck, the worst is over.”

Jeffers knew she was right. She’d made a gutsy call, and it took even more guts to stick with it. That’s why he threw in his lot with her to begin with—she had a bigger nut sack than any man he knew in politics, himself included. “If luck is what you’re counting on, Madame President, you better get on your pointy hat and broom, and conjure some up for yourself. This thing isn’t over yet.”

Myers chuckled. “I’ll do my best. Just make sure you keep your ruby slippers in the closet. I can’t afford to have you disappearing on me right now.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Diele’s out there just waiting for the first chance to drop a great big old farmhouse on your head and I want to be there to pick up the pieces when it hits.”

They wouldn’t have long to wait.

Baku, Azerbaijan

The Azeri Spring the previous year had been mostly a nonviolent revolution that drove out a relatively benign but utterly corrupt government and replaced it with a coalition of parties committed to complete secularization, Western modernization, and integration into both the EU and NATO. The government itself put up virtually no fight at all and dissolved within days without firing a shot. All of the battle casualties had been between forces within the Azeri Spring uprising and the radical Shia elements demanding the implementation of sharia law. Poorly organized and equipped, the Shia radicals were quickly suppressed.

The new president of the Republic of Azerbaijan, a Harvard-educated MBA and former oil industry executive, was the first Azeri woman to serve in that office. Her government had recently signed Memoranda of Understanding with the appropriate European agencies to begin the long process of full economic and military integration with the EU and NATO. The Azerbaijanis needed both if they hoped to escape absorption by either Russia to the north or Iran to the south. New discoveries of vast offshore gas and oil reserves promised Azerbaijan a new century of untold prosperity for the entire nation if the new reserves were managed carefully and honestly. Azerbaijan was the world’s oldest known oil producer, transporting oil to neighboring countries 2,500 years before the first American oil well was drilled in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859.

Azerbaijan’s future looked as bright as the dawn until the morning that waves of Russian fighter bombers and radar-controlled naval guns unleashed their fury, destroying Azerbaijan’s air force jets on the ground, army tanks in their storage sheds, and navy ships in their piers within minutes. Cruise missiles blasted communications facilities, including the nation’s only broadcast television station, and decimated several government buildings, including the Ministry of National Security, Parliament, the Government House, and the presidential residence.