Code 13 (12 page)

“Hang on a second, P.J.”

Victoria withdrew her hand, and he hoped she wouldn't withdraw it for long.
Focus, P.J.!

“When was Katrina, again?” she asked.

“Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, during the second term of George W. Bush's administration.”

“Okay. And Boston was 2013. Right?”

“Right.”

“So you're telling me that sometime between 2005 and 2013, the executive branch came up with this secret policy of some sort, a Constitution-Free Zone, where they can do about anything they want as long as it's within one hundred miles of the coast or the national border?”

Her leg brushed his under the table, which once again momentarily distracted him. “That's exactly what I'm telling you. I'm also saying that even though the mainstream press refused to report on it, this policy change was not so secret if anybody was paying attention.”

She looked at him curiously. “So where did you find all this?”

“Would you like to order anything else?” P.J. looked up. The waitress had returned. “Give us a few more minutes, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

He waited again until she had stepped away, then looked across the table at Victoria, her red hair mirroring a subtle sheen under the subdued lights. “Actually, I learned about this so-called Constitution-Free Zone from a source I'm not always that fond of.”

“Let me guess. The Communist Party?” A coy smile.

He discovered that her smile, nicely timed, had a soothing effect on him. “You know the right things to say to get me calmed down, don't you?”

“I try. We don't want you having a stroke prematurely.” She touched his hand again. “Seriously, though, how did you find out about this Constitution-Free Zone?” Her tone had turned solemn.

“Okay,” he said. “I learned about it through the ACLU.”

“You serious?”

“Dead serious. The ACLU, to its credit, is the only group aware of this or that even cares. They've been reporting on it since 2008. Nobody else has even noticed.”

“You know,” Victoria said, “even though they're off mark on a lot of stuff, like church-state issues, the ACLU does a lot of good in a lot of areas.”

“Yes, they do. And exposing this policy is one of the good things they do.”

A raised eyebrow. “Okay, why does the ACLU say the government claims they can search within a hundred miles of the border with no warrant?”

“They claim this because it's in a federal regulation. I've seen the regulation. The ACLU is right. It's a regulation published by Homeland Security at 8 CFR section 287.2. Basically it's a claim that they can stop-and-search whenever they have what is called a reasonable suspicion, anytime they want, as long as they're within a hundred miles of the coast or the border. They claim they don't need a warrant.”

“That sounds unconstitutional.”

“Of course it's unconstitutional,” he thundered. “There's this thing called the Fourth Amendment that is totally contrary to this regulation, and there's this little thing called a search warrant that the Fourth Amendment requires be issued before a search can take place. But that's not stopping the feds. They do what they want to do and nobody's stopping them.”

“Hang on.” She pulled her smartphone out of her purse. The dim glow of the screen reflected on her face. Half a minute later, her eyes widened. “Wow. I see what you're talking about with Katrina. These pictures are showing exactly what you described. It's like a Gestapo army with soldiers in black Gestapo helmets with black armored vehicles and machine guns walking down these deserted residential streets.”

“Keep looking. Google some of the pictures of these guys kicking down people's doors.”

She modified her search. A moment later, another look of astonishment.

“And this is the tip of the iceberg,” P.J. said. “The federal government, and especially Homeland Security and the EPA and IRS, are going hog wild.”

“What do you mean when you say they're going hog wild?”

He leaned over the table, bringing his face within a few inches of hers, and lowered his voice. “Have you been keeping up with these gargantuan ammunition purchases by the Department of Homeland Security and the IRS?”

Another confused look on her pretty face. “What are you talking about?”

“Get this. During the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security put in orders for 1.6 billion rounds of hollow-point bullets.”

“Did you say
billion
?”

“Yes, I said billion. Not million.
Billion
.”

“And did you say
hollow point
?”

“Yes, I said hollow point. The most lethal type of ammo you can imagine.”

“Whoa. That sounds like a ton of ammo for a federal agency that isn't even military.”

“That's a mild way of putting it. At the height of the Iraq War, the U.S. Army fired less than six million rounds per month. So that's less than seventy-two million rounds per year. Put it this way. Homeland Security bought more ammunition than the military uses in a war. In fact, that's enough ammunition to sustain the U.S. Army in a hot war for twenty years!”

“I don't understand.” She paused. “Why would Homeland Security need all that ammo?”

“Bingo. You just asked the billion-dollar question. You know there are only three hundred million Americans. Who are they going to shoot?”

“Wait a minute. Where did you get this information? You didn't get this from one of those right-wing conspiracy sites, did you?”

P.J. chuckled. “Not unless you call
Forbes
magazine one of those conspiracy sites.
Forbes
reported on this on May 11, 2013. The
Denver Post
reported on it on February 15 of 2013. Fox News reported on it. But again, most of the mainstream media ignored it.”

Victoria checked her cell phone again. “I see the
Forbes
article. This is scary. I mean, again, why do these agencies need all this ammo?”

“I'm sorry to have to be right. And you're right. It's scary. And the public has no clue.”

“I'll say.”

Her green eyes danced in the dim light, displaying an enticing mixture of curiosity, fear, excitement, and admiration. A moment passed.

“And you discovered this during your research on the drone project?”

“Yes. Every bit of it. I'd heard rumblings of some of this stuff, but I didn't believe it. Or maybe I didn't want to believe our government is turning the Fourth Amendment on its head. And it's not just Homeland Security. It's the Bureau of Land Management, the IRS, the EPA. And it's not just the feds. State and local cops are just as bad. I ran across this article in the
New York Times
from June 2014 about war gear flowing to police departments. They're all arming themselves to the teeth. The
Times
article talked about even small police departments going crazy buying armored personnel carriers, M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers. You name it. You start researching, and one thing leads to another.”

“This is mind-boggling.” Victoria looked at him, her leg brushing against his knee again. “But again, why, P.J.? Why are they buying all this ammo?”

“You've again asked the right question, Victoria. I can't prove this, but to me there's only one explanation.” He looked into her face. “To be prepared for martial law.”

“Martial law?”

“Yep. In the event of an economic collapse. Americans already own so many guns personally, because of the Second Amendment, that
these government agencies, in my opinion, feel like they need even more guns and bullets than Americans own. That's the only explanation. In theory, these agencies would have enough ammo to take on the U.S. Army.”

“You think a collapse is coming?”

“How can it not?” He started to touch her hand but refrained. “With the national debt load exploding every day, it's not a matter of
if
it's going to collapse, but
when
. The law of mathematics will catch up with us.”

She didn't respond at first but nodded her head and lowered her gaze out at the street before asking, “Okay. Another question.”

“Fire away.”

“I'm concerned too. But what does all this have to do with your legal opinion to the Secretary on the Navy's drone project?”

“Don't you see it?”

“I think I do, but tell me,” she said.

“Look. Here's the problem. The manufacturer has already built a couple hundred of them. They've loaned them out to the Navy just to whet the command's appetite. But they're going to build so many of these drones that they'll be like a swarm of locusts in the skies. Part of the problem is that they aren't just going to be flying out over water. The bigger part of the problem is that they'll be flying over land. Over cities, towns, interstate highways, the countryside, you name it.”

“That's a spooky thought.”

“No kidding. You'll see them all the time. They'll be flying below the cloud cover in a lot of cases. And because of what the federal government claims is a ‘Constitution-Free Zone,' these drones will be flying up to one hundred miles inland.”

Victoria sat there a second, looking stunned. “So the game plan is for these drones to fly over domestic U.S. soil?”

“Absolutely. I've seen the plans. That's why they want the clearance on the
posse comitatus
angle.”

“Well, there's something I don't quite understand. Since these drones are flying over domestic soil, why isn't the proposed contract
with Homeland Security? Why not just a smaller contract with the Navy, then sell the drones to a domestic federal law enforcement agency?”

P.J. nodded his head. “That's a great question. And the answer is because of political ramifications.”

“What political ramifications?”

“It's easier to sell the contract to Congress if it's sold to the Navy than to Homeland Security. Why? Because it's getting sold primarily on the need to combat maritime terrorism. The domestic surveillance part isn't emphasized as the main part of the contract. That's a secondary part, on paper.”

“By maritime terrorism, do you mean they say they need the drones to stop terrorists slipping into country by boat?”

“Well, that's part of it. But the threat posed by maritime terrorism is even more dangerous than that. Did you ever read that novel
The Black Sea Affair
?”

“Oh, yes. I read it in Justice School because it was written by that ex–Navy JAG officer. Somebody Brown. I can't remember his first name.”

“That's right. The guy was in the JAG Corps back in the '90s. But do you remember what the book was about?”

“I'm pretty sure it was about this Russian freighter that got loose on the high seas, and these Islamic Chechens were building a hydrogen bomb in it. And the American president sends a Los Angeles–class submarine to go hunt it down.”

P.J. nodded. “That's right. Brown's novel calls attention to this dangerous issue of maritime terrorism. See, most Americans aren't aware of it. It's almost impossible to keep track of a ship on the high seas unless you have another ship following it constantly, or unless that ship activates its GPS transmitter. So it could sail right into New York or San Francisco harbors with an atomic bomb on board, detonate the bomb, and no one would know what's coming.”

“Now that's a nightmare scenario,” Victoria said.

“Of course it is. That's what Brown addressed in the book. The problem is that radar can't see way out in the ocean. In fact, radar can
only shoot out about seven miles. In Brown's book, nobody could find the Russian freighter on the high seas, and everybody worried that it was headed to London or New York Harbor. So they went looking for it to try to sink it.”

“Yes. I remember that. It was a pretty tension-filled scenario.”

“That's right. It was also a realistic scenario. And even though the public as a whole isn't aware of it, Congress has been discussing this disastrous scenario for years.” He took a swig of beer. “For years, neither the Navy nor the Coast Guard could do anything to defend against it. Until now.”

Her eyes lit up. “So this drone contract—”

“Exactly. With the sheer numbers of drones that would be manufactured under this contract, the Navy can send a swarm of drones hundreds of miles out over the ocean, in flight patterns parallel to the coastline, and vastly increase our visual coverage of the seas.”

“Ah. So therefore, the drone project expands coverage of coastal waters to better fight against the possibility of maritime terrorism, because it enables the Navy to see many more ships approaching the American coastline.”

P.J. nodded. “Precisely. The Navy can physically see more ships approaching the U.S. coast from miles out because of cameras on the drones, plus these drones also have radar in the nose cone. With these little drones buzzing out there over the ocean 24/7, we can extend effective radar coverage to fourteen, twenty-one, twenty-eight, thirty-five miles, even more. So this is what makes the contract so politically attractive—the notion, finally, of protecting the coasts against some unknown ship sailing into Boston or New York with a hydrogen bomb. In fact, that makes the contract very attractive for lawmakers.” P.J. looked into her eyes. “But there's a catch.” He paused again.

“There always is. I'm listening.” She touched his hand. “Tell me about it.”

“The catch is that when Homeland Security caught wind of this potential contract, they decided they wanted in on the action. So at first they floated proposals for their own contract. But both the administration and the Congressional Budget Office axed the idea, on the
grounds that two major government contracts of this magnitude would be too expensive and unmanageable.