Chapter 136

Saturday morning NSA sent me the morning updates while we were eating breakfast. I assumed there was something I should look at. The thing that was highlighted was Iran - again.

They were up their old tricks again - now they were flying drones over the Strait of Hormuz. They were entitled to by a mutually agreed treaty that gave them air space rights that in places went to the center of the waterway.

They were testing the response to excursions over the lines. It was normal intelligence gathering - the cat and mouse that powers played against potential adversaries.

The Soviets and Chinese were experts at it. They routinely flew such flights against our Alaskan airspace. The Russian flew Backfire bombers gauging our response and at what point our fighters were dispatched to challenge them.

The Backfires were loaded with listening equipment instead of bombs to monitor radio communications between our bases and the fighters.

The Chinese were even braver or else stupid. They flew spy planes miles inside the South Korean airspace, repeatedly ignoring all orders to leave. They flew while listening to frantic calls between fighter jets and control.

Of course the South Koreans were afraid to shoot them down. The Chinese had no such problems; they even shot down a KAL passenger plane in the past for an intrusion.

It wasn’t up to me to order them shot down, that was up to the host country’s defense - unless there was a mutual defense treaty. We did have a limited agreement with Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Kuwait. Our radar installations were to notify them if we saw anything but were to take no offensive action unless they came close to a US installations.

The host countries were to take military action against intruders. It sounded great on paper; in reality it sucked. Their chain of command for defensive action was just too long and too slow to be effective.

I expanded the shoot down security circle around all US installations for drones, aircraft and missiles. I also removed approval steps necessary to shoot down drones and missiles. Before it took six steps; I reduced it to three. Every step took time.

The motorcade that was carrying us to Andrews was waiting in front of the White House. The national security group brought a briefcase with more updates. I was going to read them on the way.

I wanted to be on the ground in Vegas around 1100. This was an afternoon and evening fund raiser. I wanted to walk the convention center and look at the displays before it was packed. I was wearing thin body armor, the Secret Service brought their approved armor and Ziva had brought the full JBG HD body armor. I was going to be well protected.

By the time we landed I was finished with the security updates and the JBG updates from my mates. We had not talked a lot last night about JBG things; we were just too glad to be together.

The security zone was down to one hundred and twenty five French prisoners left; all of the cartel prisoners from the Mexican project had gone to meet their maker.

I thought about sending the worst of the illegals - the ones that had been deported for crimes and had returned to the US - there. It was a thought. Ice was not returning any of those back to Mexico yet.

I would order it on Monday. There was no need to send them back to Mexico for a second or third time; they would keep coming back again and again at the first opportunity.

So far seventy thousand homeless had been removed from the streets and fifteen thousand rioters. Today as the sun came up the rioters were gone in all the cities. They had decided it was time to get out of Dodge.

The street rumor mill had started late yesterday. Anyone arrested under martial law was subject to the military criminal proceedings, far more restrictions on attorneys and challenging evidence, and more aggressive penalties. Hard labor meant hard labor and ten years meant ten years. That was enough to scare some of them away. Not getting California’s lax criminal courts that issued no fines and no jail time took all the fun out of rioting/partying.

We landed at McCarran International a few minutes before 1100. A motorcade was already waiting. I put on the heavy protection and waited while the Secret Service had a quick meeting with the advance group.

Everywhere I went that was planned, an advance group went first. A C17 carried the second Beast and a backup decoy Beast and several heavily armored Suburbans. The Secret Service arrived days in advance to plan for emergencies.

With three of these a week until July they were going to be busy. The party was paying some of the cost to keep Congress from complaining too much.

The motorcade carried us by casino row on the way to the convention center. The convention center was two million square feet; half of it was set up in a springtime home renovation theme for the week.

The other half - separated by huge doors with just a walkway through - was set up for the political arena with thousands of chairs, tables and bleachers along the sides.

A commercial vendor had the concessions center along one wall to make hot dogs, hamburgers and American fries.

It took some doing but I finally was able to talk the agents into letting me and my entourage walk through the home renovation displays and tools and toys. By the time we got to the front it was time to do the PR work for the event.

There were dozens of well to do contributors who were residents of Arizona, Nevada and even a few from California, that had contributed very large sums to the National Conservative Party and the Nevada Conservative party.