True Allegiance

He paused for one moment more, looking out at the New York skyline. The cameras clicked.

The moment.

The president relaxed in his hotel room after the speech, flipping through the channels. The coverage was nearly universally ecstatic, though one guest commentator on Fox News had the gall to ask whether the president had any leads on the perpetrators. The host, uncomfortable with politicizing the moment, moved the guest quickly off the point. The chyron read: “PRESIDENT: A TIME FOR LOVE.” Over and over, channel after channel, the footage of the hug played as if on a continuous loop.

The knock at the door disturbed Prescott’s reverie. Tommy Bradley peeked his head in. “Come in, Tommy,” said the president magnanimously, muting the television. “Have you seen this fucking coverage?”

Bradley grinned weakly. “It’s phenomenal, Mr. President. Just phenomenal.”

“Let’s see them try to stop the Work Freedom Program after this, eh?”

“Mr. President…”

“What is it? Spit it out.”

“Did you know that Brett Hawthorne is in New York?”

“No, but why the hell should I care where he is? He’s a free man, isn’t he?”

Tommy bit his lip. “Well, you see, it’s what he’s doing here that could be problematic. I just got word from my guy at JFK that he’s digging around flight manifests, and that he’s asked to see pictures of Arabs first.”

“Jesus Christ. Racial profiling? Right after the ‘love’ speech?”

“And they say that the media probably will figure it out pretty soon. I mean, these things have a way of leaking.”

“Je. Sus. Christ. Who the hell gave him authority for this?”

“My guy didn’t know the answer to that.”

“Well, track down the general. Should have left that pain in the ass in Iran. Jesus.” And he turned up the volume to hear himself speak once again, his voice blaring through the hard-wooded presidential suite: “Vengeance is God’s, we know. Our job is to build.”

Ellen

El Paso, Texas

GOVERNOR DAVIS’S REFUSAL TO SEND the National Guard to New York sparked a firestorm across the nation. He cited precedent—hadn’t the governor of California refused a federal request to place National Guard troops on the border?—but in the aftermath of the bridge attack, he didn’t get much sympathy. “Everyone knows that Texas thinks of itself as its own little country,” shouted one MSNBC commentator into the camera, “but this time, their hick governor has shown himself to be deeply unpatriotic. You don’t get to be a star on the flag of the United States and then go AWOL when your country needs you. John F. Kennedy said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.’ In Texas, Bubba Davis says, ‘Ask not what you can do for your country, ask how you can leave them hanging in their time of need.’”

Davis stood fast, though. He refused the requests for the National Guard, redeployed them to the border. He told the media that the crime rate across the state had dropped dramatically. He pointed at the rapidly dropping illegal border crossings, explained that the drug trafficking had been cut dead.

It didn’t help. Day after day, the media ran with the story: a president calling for love and unity, and a southern secessionist governor looking like George Wallace. Never mind that Davis had stood with the marchers of the civil rights era: he now stood on the side of the Old South, the media proclaimed.

Before long, Davis turned to Ellen to be the face of his defiance.

She refused.

The president of the United States, she told Davis, had brought her husband home in one piece. He’d made mistakes, she knew. He’d exiled her husband based on lies, separated them for years, slashed the military, undermined the mission, she thought. But in the end, he’d brought Brett home. And that was all that mattered to her.

“Okay,” Bubba had said, “then I need you on the border. Somebody has to head up this outfit, and if I go down there, they’ll accuse me of outright insurrection. You’re competent, your husband is a well-known military figure, and well, damn it, you’re a woman. And those sexists in the press won’t label a woman an insurrectionist.”

So now she was back in El Paso.

She had to admit that the border felt different. It felt safe, for the first time ever. Military vehicles patrolled the Texas side of the river, with checkpoints set up to funnel visitors and workers through after checking identification. Soldiers, many speaking Spanish, spoke with the locals, helping to direct them to the local ranches. She’d been there for a week, and there hadn’t been any dead kids in the river. Every so often, a black helicopter would buzz the troops on the American side of the border; Ellen thought it might be members of the same drug cartel that had killed Vivian. She even thought she’d seen one of the men wearing a bandanna over his face.