Mark of Evil by Tim Lahaye, Craig Parshall Page B

Smoke rose from the machine guns on top of two of the Alliance vehicles in the distance, and then a millisecond later the sound of ratta-tat. The junior agent’s chest exploded as several rounds ripped through him and he dropped to the ground screaming in pain. The senior agent dropped to his side and cradledhim, covering his bloody body, but no more shots came. The agent dragged his partner over the sandy ground to the Hummer, lifted him into the back, and then leaped into the driver’s seat and jabbed his finger onto the fingerprint tab of the emergency satphone.
    “Man down, man down!” he yelled. “Verify that you have our coordinates. We’ve taken shots from an Alliance convoy. We need a medivac chopper stat! Do you read? Over.”

    OVAL OFFICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE
    Washington, D.C.
    There was a moment, just then, when President Hank Hewbright wondered whether he had made a mistake. Whether he should have convened this meeting in the soundproof, surveillance-immune confines of the Situation Room. Too late now , he thought as he eyed the four cabinet-level appointees and two White House advisors seated around him. But then there would also have been a risk with a meeting even in that hyper-secured location. The word would have leaked out to the rest of the staff that a Situation Room meeting was in progress and they would wonder why. Rumors would fly. At this point Hewbright didn’t really know whom he could trust. And he couldn’t afford to risk a leak to the international community that America was at a Level Red over this newest outrage. He had to keep them guessing.
    The president finished reading the two-page briefing memo on the incident and felt a combination of rage and nausea at the report. He leaned back in the embroidered white couch that sat just a few feet from the outer rim of the seal of the United States of America embossed in the carpet. “Two border agents were shot at. One killed?” he asked with a shake of the head.
    Elizabeth Tanner, Homeland Security director, nodded fromher position directly across the large coffee table from the president. “Regrettably, the junior agent suffered massive chest wounds and expired before the medivac helicopter arrived on the scene.”
    George Caulfield, the White House Chief of Staff sitting next to her, interjected, “The Command Center of the Global Alliance has already released a public statement. Their story is that one of the U.S. border agents had ‘threatened deadly force against the Alliance convoy with his weapon,’ and they fired on him in self-defense.”
    President Hewbright turned to William Tatter, his director of the CIA. “And your assessment of these movements along the Mexican border?”
    “They are definitely coordinated,” Tatter said. “The Alliance has been making the encroachments along our entire southern border almost daily—ever since the vote in the Senate to ratify the Charter of Global Alliance. It seems clear they believe that the action of Congress makes the United States part of Global Region One, eradicating our borders with Mexico in the south and with Canada to the north.”
    The president turned to Terrance Tyler, his secretary of state. “What’s your take on the most recent incursion, Terry?”
    Tyler was leaning back in the upholstered swivel chair, moving it slightly back and forth. “I would say, Mr. President, that this is a deliberate course of provocation. Alexander Colliquin and his compatriots at the Alliance’s Iraq headquarters know we are very vulnerable right now. We are facing a constitutional crisis—”
    Curt Levin, the clearly frustrated White House counsel, broke in. “Your use of the word crisis implies there is a reasonable legal debate over the effect of the Senate vote. But there simply isn’t! The Senate is empowered to ratify treaties. But the Global Alliance isn’t a treaty. It is a wholesale usurpation of the U.S. Constitution, making our nation and its laws and our three branches