They walked to the shed with small talk. Inside the crate were thirty brand new Russian made, synthetic stocked, bolt action sniper rifles. Each had a huge scope mounted on it that featured a range finding reticle and target turret adjustment knobs for windage and elevation. Smaller crates of ammunition and cleaning supplies in plastic kits accompanied the rifles. Mr. Ito handed Jesus Gonzalez a rifle and picked another out of the rack in an opened crate.
“These are among the most accurate in the world. Look through the scope.”
Jesus Gonzalez did so and saw it was filled with circles and lines that grew smaller as one went down toward the bottom of the reticle.
“Instruction manuals accompany each rifle. You are to select your best marksmen and train them in the use of these rifles,” Mr. Ito told Jesus Gonzalez as they walked out of earshot.
“Señor Ito, forgive me, you have paid me much money to do things I wanted to do, had a good time in doing, and would do again, but doing battle with the American Army is not one of them. Even I am not that stupid.”
Ito smiled. “First, you can kill a man over half a mile away with one shot from any one of these rifles. They are that accurate. Second, you can do it from your side of the border, because the Americans will not violate the border to pursue you. Third, you do not have to do it yourself. Give a one-hundred-dollar reward to the shooter every time he hits an American. It does not matter if he wounds or kills the American, so long as the bullet strikes him. I will also give you one hundred dollars each time an American soldier is wounded or killed by one of your men. It will cost you nothing, you have nothing to lose, and you stand to gain a good deal of money. It all depends upon how well you train your men.”
Jesus thought about it for a moment, then asked, “How do you know the Americans won’t cross the border to come after us, or shoot us with their tanks or rockets?”
“First, relations between Mexico and the Americans are already strained, so much more since you initiated your cross-border activities. President Dorn will do nothing more than irritate President Bustamante. That would be very bad for business. Second, the law forbids it, and the Americans are very conscious of the law and generally abide by it. Third, it would create a serious public relations challenge for them if it became known they were breaking the law to shoot up another country. Fourth, if they cross the river to come after you, you can shoot them with AK-47s, with rocket propelled grenades, and throw hand grenades. Fifth, their rifles, M-16s, are essentially varmint rifles. They do not have the range or accuracy these rifles do. Sixth, your men can be scattered over several hundred miles of the border. The Americans won’t know where to concentrate their forces.”
“Why not just kill them with rocket propelled grenades and be done with it?”
“Because RPGs leave a very visible trail of smoke that reveals your position. This way, they do not know where the men are who are shooting at them.”
Jesus Gonzalez thought about it for another minute, then decided to himself, I can give the men fifty dollars and keep one hundred and fifty dollars for myself. One dead American a day at that rate is pretty good business. If the men are pursued, we can surprise them with the RPGs.
Jesus Gonzalez smiled. “Señor Ito, we will do it.” As always, I am grateful for your generosity.”
“If the soldiers go away, you will, of course, begin your excursions across the border, will you not?”
“Oh, most certainly. In spite of our losses, the men find it both intoxicating and profitable.”
Ito smiled. “You have done well. Another ten thousand dollars in my car is for you.” What he thought was nothing to harass the Americans and keep them occupied.
Roberta’s voice came over the telephone. “Mr. President, President Vassily Chernikof is on line one.”
“Thank you, Roberta.” Hello, Vassily. How are you this day?
“Well, Henry, all things considered, not too bad. All family is in good health, and I am sure that you have heard that as of yesterday we have successfully concluded the prosecution of one industrial ring of organized crime that was exploiting the mineral wealth of our country.”
“Yes, Vassily, I heard. Congratulations! Your prosecutors and police investigators are to be commended. Let us hope they continue their good works.”
“We have heard of the raids you are experiencing, and I am calling to offer my condolences to the grieving families of those killed by these bandits. We, too, as you know, have been experiencing similar episodes for some time, especially from Chechnya.”
“Thank you, Vassily. I will have our public relations guru issue a press release that you and the people of Russia have called with their condolences. I am sure it will be appreciated by all.”
“We are still very much in America’s debt, Henry. Your former President Bush was very helpful in expanding our trade with you as much as possible some years ago. Purchasing our products has done as much as anything in assisting us in fighting the organized criminal elements here. He understood what we were faced with in Chechnya much better than the so-called human rights activists of your country.
“Unfortunately, as you know, we have experienced considerable difficulties with the Islamic states on our southern border which used to be part of our old empire conducting similar raids. Chechnya, in particular, still part of Russia, has been a most thorny problem. Still, the other Islamic states send armed bands into our country, waging what amounts to low-grade banditry, brigandage, or terrorism, depending upon your point of view. Now, with the problems you have with raiders from Mexico, I believe many more Americans understand what we have experienced over the decades in Chechnya and more recently from these independent Islamic states.”
“I’ll be sure that Mike includes a paragraph or so to call attention to your years of experiencing a similar situation. Perhaps it will help that segment of our society who feels that this is just the work of poor starving Mexicans striking out in desperation.”
“Thank you, Henry. Again, our condolences from Russia; we also hope that you bring these bandits to swift justice. My regards to Mrs Dorn.”
“Thanks again, Vassily. Our warmest regards to Alexandra and the kids.”
Chapter 9
The summer of 2019 was one of intense campaigning for the Democratic Party. Half a dozen candidates were serious contenders for the Democratic nomination. In the end, it was Senator Henry Kenneley who won the Democratic Party’s nomination at the Chicago convention in July. He campaigned during both the primary and general election on the standard social welfare police state rhetoric of the Democratic Party. Jobs, greater standardization and federal control of education, protection of the environment, socialized medical care for everyone, regardless of health insurance or lack thereof, public housing, expansion of the food stamp program, and clothes for school children, and the promise that greater police protection would denigrate the need for personal ownership of firearms. All would be provided to immigrants and their families as they “took jobs Americans shun.”
Jason Thornton was something of a dark horse. He was a Jeffersonian Democrat in disguise of a Republican. Thomas Jefferson believed in the independent farmer, merchant, tradesman, and craftsman who had an inherent distrust of government. Independent minded citizens who would accept responsibility for their own welfare and held an inherent distrust of government were the fundamental beliefs of what is now termed Jeffersonian Democracy.
Jason Thornton harbored a terrible vision that some day the United States would no longer be a Republic. Like Rome from the First Century A.D. onward, he reasoned, it depended too much on imports, on “slave, read foreign” labor, on having to rely upon foreign mercenaries to man their armies, foreign sources of food, that a tremendous gulf separated the poor and the remainder of society. The only major difference was that the timeline was being tremendously compressed. The middle class would be economically squeezed, with the great majority being forced into the ranks of the poor. The cream of the middle class would rise to the upper class rich, while the remainder of the middle class would be terribly diminished. As one economic advisor told him, “The rich and the poor always gang up on the middle class. The poor can’t afford to pay the taxes for all these social welfare programs, and the rich have the power to see that they themselves don’t pay for them.”
On a budget provided primarily by the center of the middle class and the upper middle class, he borrowed a few issues of the Democratic Party. He stressed that he would create a greater stewardship of the environment, far better than previous Republican administrations. Being something of a hunter, he saw the need for hunting as a means to control selected wildlife populations, such as white-tailed deer that had overgrown their ecological niche in many eastern states. He also campaigned for private ownership of firearms in the west, where the significance of such was brought home as a result of the Mexican raids.
He promised greater border security, tightening of immigration restrictions, limited tariffs and other forms of protection for American manufacturing to counter foreign imports and protection of American jobs. By 2003, 96% of all of the clothes worn by Americans were manufactured overseas. He stressed a return of the clothing and shoe industry to the U.S., especially in the south where cotton was grown and textiles were manufactured, and in the northeast where the garment industry used to exist. He promised greater support to agriculture, since America’s greatest exports were grain and beef. Much of America’s fruit and vegetables were now imported from Central and South America. Much of the processed foods industry had moved south over the last ten years because the labor was so much cheaper. Manufacturers could make and ship processed foods frozen cheaper from Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico than they could be processed in the United States. Factory workers in China were making seventy-five cents per hour, while American manufacturing workers were being paid an average of twenty-one dollars per hour. U.S. made goods could not be found on the shelves of almost any store.
In the rust belt, he promised tariffs against imported iron and steel until those industries could make another “adjustment” as they had in the opening years of the twenty-first century.
In foreign policy, he railed against the historical Bretton-Woods agreement, in which the underlying policy concept was founded that economics was the cause of world wars. He preached how this concept of leveling the economic playing field worldwide led to the decline and economic prosperity of the United States. The U.S. trade deficit was approaching 10 trillion dollars, up from 3.5 trillion in 2003. While the United States declined in economic power and other countries increased in wealth, there had been no effect whatsoever in reducing wars and international tensions. Africa smoldered, flared and burned in numerous civil wars based on tribal, religious and ethnic grounds, as well as between countries over boundaries, oil, gold and diamonds. The Central Asian Republics became even more dictatorial through ethnic strife, tribalism and Islamic fanaticism; one tyrannical government replaced another. The Middle East was on the brink of deploying weapons of mass destruction, as democracy was being rolled back on many fronts.
With demographic predictions indicating that in thirty years or less, over one half of the U.S. population would be foreign born, mostly Hispanic, his threat of immigration limitations sparked civil strife in many cities. Barrios in Los Angeles, San Antonio, Houston, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, Dallas-Fort Worth, Omaha, Chicago, and New York demonstrated against his so-called “racism.” The La Reconquesta movement of Mexican Americans came out in the open as an organized political force supporting Senator Kenneley.
Mexico began to experience small riots and an increase in lawlessness. Small bands of revolutionaries, which the government labeled as “bandits with lawyers” emerged among the native American populations in the states of Yucatan, Jalisco, and Durango. The movement in the state of Durango had an urban element to it as well as a rural one, centered in the city of Durango. The common theme was against corruption in government and a more equitable distribution of resources, particularly land.
Selecting Los Angeles as a site for the Democratic convention backfired on the Democratic Party. Selected to show Democratic support for Mexican Americans, many of the city’s Latino citizens responded with riots and violence against the Democrat’s National Convention. La Reconquesta bussed in Mexicans from nearby border towns to swell their numbers. They provided them with free meals, cigarettes, and massive campgrounds around the city in support of their demonstrations. In the end, the riots of East Los Angeles, the numerous deaths, the destruction of more than a dozen square blocks of the barrio by fire resulted in a backlash originating in the middle class. When it was over, every middle-class person who had a job or even hoped for one voted Republican. The working population of both white and black Americans felt tremendously threatened by the influx of more immigrants, of losing their jobs, of further exportation of service industries, and the very few remaining manufacturing jobs. In a unique movement, middle class Black America voted Republican. Iowa, Minnesota, Washington, and Maine went Republican in the Electoral College. It was enough to swing the election to Jason Thornton.
Jason Thornton’s immediate problems were the relationship with Mexico and the selection of his cabinet. As of the swearing in ceremony, he was still debating on several cabinet positions. Continued long range sniping at soldiers from the Mexican side of the border resulted in pulling American forces a kilometer back inside the U.S. In spite of this, sniping continued. Mexican snipers then began to stalk the American soldiers on American soil. Thornton’s response was immediate. The day after he took the oath of office, he ordered Army sniper teams to retaliate. Counter sniping became the order of the day. Army two-man sniper teams began to cross the Rio Grande at various points and hunt down and kill any armed Mexican civilian they saw. After seven Mexican snipers were eliminated and their rifles collected, the Mexicans stayed on their side of the Rio Grande.
When Mexico’s President Bustamante discovered American soldiers were violating Mexican territory, he angrily denounced in public American intrusion of Mexico’s Sovereignty. Mexico’s ambassador filed a formal protest and called upon President Thornton. Jason Thornton calmly replied to the Mexican ambassador that if Mexico didn’t like it, all they had to do was stop the cross-border raids and sniping. Until then, the United States would take whatever action it deemed necessary to protect its sovereignty and its citizens. President Thornton’s last words to the Mexican ambassador were, “If those responsible for cross border raids were not brought to justice in the near future, it is conceivable that the United States will take appropriate action to see that the responsible individuals are brought to the United States for trial or killed, even if it is on Mexican soil. That is my position, Mr. Ambassador. Please give my kind regards to President Bustamante.”
Somehow, Jason Thornton’s words were leaked to the press without his knowledge or consent. They made a splash in Mexican newspapers that aroused a wave of Mexican nationalism. In the United States, they aroused a wave of support for Jason Thornton.
The October day was cool, the nighttime temperature dropped into the upper thirties, Fahrenheit degrees. The day had been overcast, but no rain. The coming day promised to be similar, only cooler. The humidity hung around 50%. It was 02:00 local time. A ten mile an hour wind was steadily blowing from the north. Gusts of 15 miles an hour occurred frequently. The 100-odd four-man teams emerged from various tunnels and cautiously edged towards a fifty mile long stretch of the fence of the demilitarized zone. All four members of each team carried what appeared to be self-contained breathing apparatus on their backs. The steel tanks were painted dark grey, and the faces and hands of all of the men were painted with earth tone camouflage paints. Foliage was secured in helmet nets. Four hundred meters short of the fence, the four men of each team spread apart, one man every one hundred meters. When they reached the fence, each man extended a collapsible wand ten feet into the air and opened the valve on his tank. Each tank made a low hissing sound as it emptied its contents. It took fifteen minutes to empty a tank. The men turned and slowly crawled back to the tunnels from which they had emerged two hours earlier.
The first cases were reported three days later. At first, the soldiers reported to their battalion aid stations. They were running a high fever, experiencing tightness in the chest, and some reported difficulty in breathing. In the next twenty-four hours, the ranks of the ill swelled. By the fifth day, as much as fifty percent of some units were in sick bay. On day five post release, some began to die. Many were shipped the thirty-odd miles from Camp Casey to Seoul. The abandoned American bases simply could not handle the enormous number of ill South Korean soldiers. Initially, the South Korean government attempted to keep the epidemic quiet. The outbreak was noted in Seoul a week later and reported on international television. CNN spread the word of another attack of the Asian influenza. The World Health Organization committed teams of virologists, bacteriologists, and epidemiologists. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, was invited to send its teams to Seoul.
The quick and dirty preliminary epidemiological investigation supported the contention that sixty to seventy percent of the South Korean troops on the DMZ were experiencing the disease. The case fatality ratio, that is, the number dead among those ill seemed to be about twenty-five percent.
Curtis Matthews, MD, forensic pathologist, removed his gloves, placed them in the biohazard materials bag, followed by his mask and gown. He peeled the tape off his pant legs which were stuffed into his disposable booties and deposited them as well. Now naked, he opened the airlock and stepped into the shower. The warm water flushed over him as he scrubbed himself from head to toe. He turned off the shower and turned on the disinfectant spray, allowing it to play over him. The next shower was with clean water to remove any disinfectant. Dripping wet, he moved to the next small area where he toweled dry. Then he moved into the locker room and donned his class B uniform. The eagles of his shoulder boards indicated he was a Colonel in the American Army, a representative of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology on the Walter Reed campus in Washington, DC.
Christ, he thought to himself, if I were back in veterinary practice, I would say this was one hell of a case of Pasteurella pneumonia, the cause of shipping fever in a calf. Dr. Matthews had been a veterinarian before he became a physician. After several years of a mixed veterinary practice in Nebraska, with several cattle and hog feedlots in his practice, Matthews decided there had to be an easier way of making a living than delivering calves in March blizzards at minus twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Going back to Medical School at his alma mater, the University of Missouri, Columbia, was tough. It cost him a great deal emotionally and physically. It cost him his marriage. His wife, an attorney, would not stand for losing her husband to studying. His second year of medical school, she took their son and left for Denver. That year, he signed on for an Army program that commissioned him as a second lieutenant in the US Army. It paid for the next three years of medical school.
He discovered his niche in pathology his sophomore year. His clinical skills were good but not outstanding his last two years. He was promoted to captain upon graduation, as were the other members of the military program. He did an internship at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, then was accepted as a pathology resident there. After three years of residency training in pathology, he was promoted to major. He passed his pathology boards examination the next year and was promoted to lieutenant colonel. He was assigned to Irwin Army Hospital at Fort Sill, OK. After two years at Fort Sill, he returned to the Walter Reed campus as a staff pathologist at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. He was assigned to the respiratory diseases branch of pathology where he specialized in diseases of the lung. After two years, he became branch chief. Now at 42 years of age, he had no social life. He occasionally wrote his son and visited him once during the Christmas holidays his first year of residency. He did not know his son, who now considered himself to be the son of his stepfather.
“What do you think, Curt?”
