The Threat

As soon as Desert Storm wrapped, everyone had expected that peace dividend. The Republicans wanted lower taxes. The Democrats wanted to fund social programs. The idea of being ready for war seemed like an anachronism. A lot of people saw the military-industrial complex as a blind and hungry wolf, swinging its muzzle to and fro as it searched desperately for the next threat.

Sometime he saw it that way too. But at other times, his complacent, tolerant, unsuspicious country looked more like a staked-out hog, around which predators circled in a threatening night.

He said, “I read the presidential directive. Sounds like he thinks this is the new big threat.”

“There’s a case,” Bloom said, his attention engaged at last. “The Russians and Cubans used to fund all these terrorist organizations along the spine of Central America. Now that teat’s gone, the producers, the traffickers, and the terrorists are doing a mating dance. These are not a bunch of barefoot boys from the barrio doing things on a whim. They’ve got technical training, the latest weapons and equipment, and strict operational security.”

“Their interests interlock,” Meilhamer said. “The armed groups can undermine and eventually overthrow the governments. The traffickers fund them in exchange for protection. And the producers, well, the weaker the government, the freer they are to operate. Right now the relations are local. The Shining Path in Peru. FARC in Colombia. But if they start coordinating operations…”

“We’ve got a fucking war,” Bloom finished for him.

Dan had read the speculation in Defense News and Armed Forces Journal about the next threat. He had personal reasons for disliking China, a country that would soon have the industrial horsepower to present a serious challenge. There was also the possibility of a resurgent Russia. And the fanatical Muslim terrorists who’d attacked Horn.

But maybe this was the real menace of the future. Ruthless multinational criminal syndicates, with their own banking, logistics, intelligence, armies.

“Right now,” Meilhamer said, “they’re on the defensive. With the aerostats and patrols we’ve just about got the cork in in the Caribbean and Gulf. And this new guy in Colombia—”

“Tejeiro,” Bloom put in.

“—Edgar Tejeiro, the new president, he sounds serious about clamping down. If he’d cooperate, root ’em out on the producer end, that’d be a double whammy.” After a moment he added, “Of course, it’d be dangerous for him too. You make these people mad, the default is to blow you away.”

“We could actually make some progress then?” Dan said. “With this Tejeiro? I’d like to find out more about him.”

“You want Luis for that. He does most of the interfacing with the host governments down there.”

* * *

Luis Alvarado brought in a PowerPoint brief on his ThinkPad. The Coast Guardsman said trafficking via the Bahamas and the Caribbean had gone up and down since importation started in the sixties. Fought to a trickle in the late eighties, when the product had been mainly grass, flown in to dirt airstrips, it had rebounded once traffickers got their hands on Global Positioning Systems. Now they precision-dropped cocaine at night. Intercepting them took a cruiser to track aircraft out of the Barranquilla Peninsula. When that net got too tight, he predicted, they’d fly at low level up Central America, land in Mexico, and jump across the border by road, with local cops paid not to notice. There were signs traffic was rerouting already.

“How about Tejeiro?” Dan asked him. “Is he serious in these promises he’s making to move against the traffickers?”

“It might cut down on the coke supply,” Alvarado said. “But the meth suppliers will just pick up the slack. The only real answer to addiction is to cut down the demand side of the equation.” He glanced at Bloom. “Education. Awareness programs. Maybe even partial decriminalization.”

“Then the pusher goes for the fifth-grader instead of the teen,” the DEA agent said. “Ever go into a ward, see the babies addicted to crack? Do that, you won’t talk about legalization.”

“I’m not talking about legalizing crack, Miles.”

“You remove the stigma, you’ll have ten times as many fucking addicts.”

Dan sensed a long-running argument and stepped in. “Thanks, Luis, Miles. I’d like to have a few minutes with Major Harlowe now.”

* * *

Dan laced his fingers, listening to Marty Harlowe’s oral brief on Asia. Like every marine he’d ever met, she projected perfect self-assurance. Unlike the others, she also looked very good in patterned stockings. She said the rate of initiation for new heroin users in the U.S. was climbing again, and typical age of first use was down to seventeen. In Burma, the United Wa State Army, what Harlowe called a “narco-insurgent group” linked to the junta, was trafficking methamphetamine and heroin into California. Dan asked her if there was a link to China too.