The kids stopped flying their drones over the airports, warned off by their parents. A Tuesday went by without incident, and President Trump said that the disruptions were now over. "I stopped them," he told the few reporters allowed into the Oval Office; the President of Mexico, the ever-poised Claudia Sheinbaum, fought to keep a poker face beside him. "I said that anyone disrupting the traffic of our beautiful air-transport system would pay the price, and they heard me and got scared. Looks like some of 'em know what's good for 'em. You guys probably don't know this -- you don't know much of anything, it seems -- our attacks on Bolivia are making them pay dearly. The other day, we hit their biggest electrical plant. They're bending, folks, they're bending. Santos says he won't negotiate with me, but he will, he'll bend the knee, they always do."
Asked for her comment, President Sheinbaum said, "President Santos has said that Bolivian attacks will end when the Americans' attacks end. I hope that will be soon."
Sitting on a sofa nearby, Vice President J.D. Vance huffed darkly as if his child had said a bad word.
The next two attacks by Bolivia are the ones that finally ended the war.
On the following Saturday, following an attack on Bolivian natural gas installations, newly-crowded American airports as well as thousands of businesses were closed yet again when some twenty "Internet farms", those massive complexes filled with row upon row of computers that together comprise the lovable-sounding "Cloud," were forced to shut down: vandals had sprayed expanding polyurethane foam deep into the exterior air-conditioning ducts of these centers. The quickly rising temperatures inside forced shutdowns. And it would take days before the hardened foam was hacked out -- chemical dissolvents could damage the machinery -- and the ducts were unblocked.
"Yeah, if there's one thing AI can't take, it's life without A/C," said one techie to a news crew. "I mean, we're all in there lookin' at this big ol' mass o' foam and we kinda look at each other and we're like, 'Buncha savages, these folks: don't fight fair. Can't just put a virus like normal people and leave it at that.'"
Bolivia as well was affected by the shutdown: a supermarket chain in its major cities refused to take credit cards, and a bank had to close for three days. Bolivians nonetheless overlooked the convenience; daily anti-American marches filled the streets of its major cities.
"Well, we've bombed all their gas plants now," President Trump told reporters on his way to his helicopter, shouting from a distance as he was surrounded by Secret Service people. "They can't take much more, it's all over. We'll keep dishing it out as long as they continue with these pinpricks."
"Pinpricks!" a woman in tight banana-yellow dress exploded indignantly on Fox and Friends. "Listen, I love President Trump with all my heart, but there are people who can't get to their meetings, school teachers who can't access their lessons, people who can't even get their cars to open! These are not pinpricks, Mr. President!"
This summed up the mood of the nation.
But the straw that broke the American back came the next week, at two NFL games: Los Angeles Chargers at Seattle, and the Philadelphia Eagles at Miami. Simultaneously, in both places, all radio communications failed. The quarterbacks and coaches were cut off, cell phones went blank, telecasts were cut, even the scoreboards went blank. Somewhere, somehow, someone was jamming all radio signals in each area.
It took hours, but the frequency jammers were finally found: in practically the only vehicles left in each stadium's parking lot: minivans. Drivers were traced and arrested, but their stories were identical: each was paid five thousand dollars, the money to be found in a shoe-store's Dumpster (Miami) and the mailbox of an abandoned house (Seattle).
It was not lost on the public that the attacks had taken place at the very opposite extremes of the country.
The games were finished in front of empty stands on Monday afternoon. Football fans, coaches, players and sports bettors cursed Bolivia and President Trump equally. At Fox and Friends, righteous pity overflowed: "When you consider how much a ticket to a game costs now? That's just not fair!" cried one panelist. "Darn right," said another. "Stopping pro football isn't helping anyone's war effort. It's nothing but an attack on the American people themselves. It's downright sacrilegious."
So sacrilegious that American attacks ceased. Bombers no longer appeared skimming over the Andes.
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