Mike Maden - Drone

Russian paratroopers dropped into the nation’s capital seven minutes after the final air assault and Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers streamed across the border moments after the first jets had taken off.

Russian forces also deployed a half dozen unarmed Searcher II surveillance drones, recently purchased from Israel Aerospace Industries. Their own drone program was in a shambles.

By noon, oil-rich Azerbaijan had once again become a Russian possession.

Washington, D.C.

As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Diele was entitled to the most up-to-date global security information available. He was duly summoned to the White House just before 11:30 a.m. for an emergency briefing, the subject of which had not been disclosed on his unsecured line.

When he arrived at the Cabinet Room, the secretaries of state, commerce, energy, and defense were already present, along with the DNI and select congressional leaders. Diele found his customary seat just as Myers and Early entered the room.

“It’s a briefing, General, so please, cut to the chase,” Myers said.

“Yes, ma’am.” General Winchell, the air force chief of staff and Diele’s close ally, was presenting the facts.

Lights darkened and the digital projector flashed satellite imagery that had recorded the Russian invasion. Winchell filled in the details. When he finished, he asked, “Questions?”

“Let’s start with the most obvious. Why?” Myers asked.

“They claim they were responding to repeated terrorist incursions on their homeland by Azeri and Shia radicals,” Winchell explained. “And cited the Myers Doctrine as precedent for their actions.” He said it like a slur rather than a fact.

“Why now?”

“They probably believe we’re distracted at the moment,” Diele answered. “Which I’d say we are, wouldn’t you?”

Myers glared at him, then turned her gaze back to the general. “How does this affect our security?”

“Say good-bye to Azeri NATO membership, for one,” Tom Eddleston said.

“And how does that affect us? I mean, directly?” Myers countered.

The secretary of defense laid out Azerbaijan’s previously helpful, though not decisive, contribution to the War on Terror, which was winding down anyway. A future NATO military base, to be built by an American contractor, had been in the works, along with defense purchases of American military equipment for the Azeri armed forces.

Myers turned to the commerce secretary. “What about oil?”

“Another price shock, to be expected. Don’t know how many more of these the markets will tolerate. Might keep the price of oil inordinately high for some time.”

“Good for OPEC, good for the Russians, the Iranians,” the energy secretary threw in.

“And good for us,” Myers countered. “We sell oil, too, remember? But does this hurt our energy supplies in any way?”

“No. The Azeri oil and gas pipelines service the European markets exclusively. If anyone will have a problem, it’s them.”

“That makes it a NATO problem, which makes it a strategic problem, which still makes it our problem,” Diele said.

All eyes turned to Myers.

“It’s a market problem, not a NATO problem. The Russians or the Azerbaijanis or the Inuits for that matter can’t sell oil or gas or anything else for more than the Europeans are willing to pay for it. If the Europeans want a cheaper source of energy, they can shop around, or they can find alternatives.”

“The European economies are already on life support. This might just pull the plug. They’re still our primary trading partners. If Europe goes down, we go down.” Diele’s eyes were daggers.

“The European economies are on life support because they’re highly unionized socialist economies with low birthrates and thirty-hour workweeks. They’ve spent themselves into oblivion on social programs while we bore the primary costs of their defense for the past six decades. I’ll not shed American blood to keep the cost of European vacations down.”

The room went silent. Everyone saw the blood flushing Diele’s face as he stared thoughtfully at his hands clasped in his lap. He was famously ill-tempered. Eyewitnesses swear he cussed out Bush 41 to his face in a PDB one time, and even threw a punch at Alexander Haig when the retired general was President Ford’s chief of staff.

But instead of the expected tirade, Diele surprised everyone.

He simply smiled.

“As you say, Madame President.”

Jeffers knew full well what was behind that withered, grinning mask. Diele had just declared war on Myers.

I-30 East, Arkansas

Traffic was backed up for miles.

The Arkansas State Police had set up a sobriety checkpoint about halfway between Hope and Arkadelphia, stopping every car in both eastbound lanes for inspections. Of course, they were actually looking for possible terrorists and their weapons.

A federal judge had recently blocked the governor’s antiterror stop-and-frisk policy, but no court had ever held against sobriety checkpoints, given the scourge that drunken driving had become, taking thousands of innocent lives every year. The governor, a huge Myers supporter, had suddenly become “quite concerned” about drunk driving in his state, particularly on I-30, one of the most heavily traveled highways in the nation.

The Arkansas state troopers required drivers and passengers to exit their stopped vehicles and perform sobriety tests, the famous finger-to-nose exercise among them. Of course, the real reason why people were forced to exit was in order to get them out from behind the metal shield of their cars and trucks. Using recently acquired terahertz imaging detectors, technicians were able to measure the natural radiation emitted by people and detect when the energy flow was impeded by an object, such as a gun. State troopers also ran sniffer dogs and handheld Geiger counters around the vehicles while the drunk tests were being performed. Vehicles occupied by Hispanics were given special attention.

An unmarked panel van was racing along eastbound I-30 at 12:05 a.m. when the driver caught sight of a ten-mile-long string of red brake lights shining in the midst of a great curtain of pines. Traffic was already beginning to slow. The Spanish-language news station broadcasting out of Little Rock announced the traffic delay due to the fact that state troopers were stopping all eastbound vehicles at a sobriety checkpoint.

The Spanish-speaking driver tapped his brakes and eased left into the broad grassy median strip, then made a sharp U-turn and bounded back on the westbound side.

That was exactly the kind of maneuver someone wanting to hide something would do. Two Arkansas State Police officers on big Harley bikes who were lurking in the dark on the westbound shoulder blasted their lights and roared after the van as soon as it had made the illegal median crossing.

When the two motorcycles had pulled within a hundred yards of the van, the two panel doors in back flung open and an AK-47 flashed from inside. The blistering 7.62 rounds shattered the windshield of the first bike and the trooper slid his Harley into the grassy median. The other trooper broke off the chase with bullets gouging the asphalt around her, and threw her body and her bike between the fleeing van and her downed partner to protect him from any more gunfire.

She instantly called in the attack and within minutes a helicopter-based sniper was putting rounds through the van’s roof as a dozen squad cars joined the chase. More gunfire erupted from the van, but a second later it ran over a police spike strip that blew out all four tires. The two men in the back of the van were tossed onto the pavement and skidded like hockey pucks across the asphalt, skinning them alive while the van cartwheeled end over end until it slammed into a pine tree just off the shoulder and erupted in flames.