Edge of Battle by Dale Brown

Author:Dale Brown [Brown, Dale]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: General, Fiction
ISBN: 0060753080
Google: KuyCK6UyURMC
Amazon: B000GCFD8G
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2009-10-12T18:30:00+00:00

“I am talking about the National Guard, madam,” he said. “California is the most populous state in America and can field a vast number of paramilitary forces—even though heavily committed around the world, their national guard outnumbers even our regular military forces in every category. You do not want to escalate a military confrontation, señora.”

“Then we will take our case to the United Nations Security Council and to the Organization of American States,” Minister of Internal Affairs Felix Díaz said as he breezed through the doors to the president’s office. “This situation is becoming an international crisis, Madam President, and we should respond accordingly.”

“Minister Díaz!” Maravilloso exclaimed happily. “We were afraid you were dead after your stunt the other day, riding around in your helicopter and inciting riots.”

“I thank you for your concern, Madam President,” Díaz said, smiling and bowing. Tall, young, and impossibly handsome, he hailed from several generations of rich, powerful hacienda owners dating back to the original Mexican land grants from the royal court in Madrid, Spain. His family had managed to keep the majority of their lands by aligning with whichever side had more power at the time—the military, the Catholic Church, the revolutionaries, the Communists, the Spanish, the Bonapartists, even the Americans: whoever could benefit the Díaz family the most received their political and financial allegiance…until power shifted again.

Díaz was educated in the finest private schools in Mexico, attended the military academy at Chapultepec, went to undergraduate flight training in Arizona, then served four years in a variety of flying units in the Fuerza Aerea Mexicana, the Mexican Air Force, including one year as squadron commander of an air combat squadron of F-5A Freedom Fighter air defense jets and AT-33A propeller trainers modified for counterinsurgency missions.

While commanding the 202nd Air Combat Squadron in Santa Lucia, Díaz helped organize and conduct a series of exercises with the Cuban Air Force, where he flew his F-5s against several different models of MiG fighters and fighter-bombers. He received considerable attention from generals and defense ministers from around the world for his political as well as flying skills. He served out his military commitment as the Mexican air attaché to the Caribbean and Latin America, shuttling all over the hemisphere almost on a daily basis on behalf of the Mexican government.

Even though he spent eight successful years in the Mexican armed forces, Felix Díaz was destined for politics almost from birth. For most of the past eighty years, his family were loyal and high-ranking members of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI. But Felix Díaz saw something happening that others failed to see: the emergence of a tremendous groundswell of support for a strong-willed, outgoing, hardworking, and hard-charging woman, Carmen Maravilloso, and her young husband. Mexican culture was slowly but surely changing, just as surely as its politics—Díaz knew he had to change with it, or be left behind.

He switched party allegiance to the Partido Accion Nacional just in time for the surprise ascension of Maravilloso’s husband, bringing a

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