Gunther was a large man about forty-five years old with a pleasant look and slight smile. He could have been a younger brother to Colin Powell. “Kirk McGarvey?” he asked.
“Yes, General,” McGarvey said, and they shook hands.
“I gave you a briefing on a new satellite hardening system when you were the DCI, no reason for you to remember.” He glanced at the map. “So what brings you down here, you need something from Ron?”
“Actually from you, General,” McGarvey said. “I need to borrow one of your hills for a day or two, plus some earthmoving equipment and the crews who know what they’re doing, along with a video and audio system, and five hundred armed troops led by someone who knows what he’s doing when he’s under the gun, especially how to follow orders that might not seem to make a lot of sense.”
Gunther didn’t blink. “The hill, the earthmovers, and the audio/visual system are no problem. As for the rest, I’m going to need to get some orders. Damn specific orders.”
“Otto?” McGarvey said.
“Not yet, but he’s still in the West Wing, I’m guessing the Oval Office.”
Gunther and the other two officers were taken up short when Otto mentioned the Oval Office, and they were suddenly very interested.
“You’ll get your orders, General, but first let me explain what’s going to happen and why and how you can help,” McGarvey said.
“You have my attention, Mr. Director,” Gunther said.
“Everything I’m about to tell you is not strictly speaking classified yet, but I’m sure that when the president talks to you, it’ll be mentioned. At the very least, what I’m about to share with you is diplomatically highly sensitive, and totally crazy.”
“Ron mentioned something about some people coming across the Mexican border. But that will be handled by the CBP, not us.” CPB was the U.S. Customs and Border Protection service, which was an agency of Homeland Security.
“Not some people, more than a thousand—and very possibly a lot more,” McGarvey said. “Most of them will be ordinary Mexican citizens, but there’ll probably be some Cubans in the mix, and I want the confrontations to be kept to a minimum, and no arrests if possible unless I give the word.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Gunther demanded. “What do these people want? Can’t be immigration status. We’ll round them up for you and ship their asses right back across the border.”
“You won’t have to do that, because within twenty-four hours, probably less, they’ll turn around and leave of their own accord. All I want you to do is contain them.”
“If they make it across.”
“They will because you’ll let them,” McGarvey said.
Otto turned the laptop around so that they could all see the image of President Langdon seated behind his desk in the Oval Office.
“Good afternoon, Mr. President,” McGarvey said. “Has Mr. Page briefed you on what I want to do with your help and why?”
“Yes, he has, and he’s here now with Frank Shapiro,” Langdon said. “I understand that you and Mr. Rencke are at Holloman. Who is with you at this moment?”
“General Gunther who runs Fort Bliss, along with Colonel Endicott who is the CO here and Holloman’s public affairs officer, Captain Whitelaw.”
“Can they all see and hear me?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Gunther said, stepping into view so that the laptop’s camera could see him.
“Has Mr. McGarvey explained what he wants to do?”
“Yes, sir, and I think there is a very great possibility for any number of things to go wrong.”
Langdon didn’t hesitate. “I completely agree with you, nevertheless you and Colonel Endicott are going to give Mr. McGarvey every assistance within your power, short of starting a all-out shooting war. Do you understand?”
“Frankly no, Mr. President. But we will do as we’re ordered.”
“Good. And until you hear otherwise—from me personally—this mission is classified top secret.”
“What about the media, Mr. President?”
“That’ll be up to McGarvey, how close they’re allowed to come, but under no circumstances will they be briefed by your people.”
“Yes, sir,” Gunther said.
“Very well. Wherever you are, I want you to clear out for a minute or two. What I have to say next is for McGarvey’s ears only.”
SIXTY-NINE
The Cubana de Aviación Yakovlev-40 refueled at Mexico City’s International Airport at three in the afternoon local and made the eight hundred miles up to Ciudad Juárez’s Abraham González International Airport a little under two hours later.
María, dressed in jeans, Nikes, and a light New York Yankees jersey against what she figured would be a relatively cold desert evening, got up from her seat in the front row as most of the other thirty passengers who’d flown up from Havana with her and Fuentes shuffled past. They would be taken to a staging area closer to the border to wait for the word to pull out. The four who remained in their seats were DI field officers, handpicked by Ortega-Cowan, well trained, dedicated to the mission and the state, all of them expert shooters and hand-to-hand combat killers.
“No telling what that bastard McGarvey and his CIA pals will have waiting for you,” Ortega-Cowan had told her.
“You’re sending bodyguards to protect me?”
He’d shrugged and smiled, and she thought at that moment that she’d never trusted anyone less in her life. Power corrupted and absolute power corrupted absolutely, and he wanted the whole enchilada.
It was ballsy flying one of the VIP jets that her father, El Comandante, had used for diplomatic trips around the Caribbean and South and Central America, but again she’d agreed with Ortega-Cowan, who suggested that not only didn’t Raúl and his people suspect that she was back, they would never dream that she was flying out again on a supposedly government-sanctioned trip.
“Listen up, compadres, the mission will begin in the next eighteen hours or so, but I want you to remain alert because we could get orders to move out at a moment’s notice,” she told them.
Most of them were young, in their early to mid-twenties, and this afternoon they were dressed in ordinary civilian clothes, mostly jeans or khakis, dark jackets to cover the holstered or pocketed pistols, and sneakers or boots.
“We understand, Coronel, but can we finally be told our mission?” a young lieutenant by the name of Ruiz asked.
“We’re ready to kick ass, señora, just tell us whose and where,” someone else added, and they all laughed.
“You’ll have plenty of opportunity,” she told them. If it came down to it, they would be her rearguard getting back across the border. “Two hints: We’re heading a few kilometers north of here, and the opposition’s headquarters is at a place called Langley just outside of Washington.”
“About time,” someone said.
María turned, and she and Fuentes went up the aisle to the main hatch where the pilot and copilot where waiting on the flight deck.
“You and my people will stay at the DoubleTree Hotel downtown,” María told them. “But be ready to return here within a one-hour notice.”
“How long do you contemplate our time on the ground will be?” the captain, a former air force major, asked.
“I don’t know,” María said, and she turned to the open hatch, but then came back, her tone softening. “I really don’t know. But I suspect it’ll be at least twenty-four hours, but very probably less than forty-eight. I just need you to look sharp twenty-four/seven.”
“Sí, Señora Coronel.”
A gray Hummer was waiting for them at the arrivals area outside, a driver and another man riding shotgun in front, but neither of them said a word when María and Fuentes climbed in the backseat. Nor did they speak or even look over their shoulders for the fifty-mile drive southwest, the last few miles of it on a dirt track to a palatial compound on the shores of Laguna Guzman, which was a fair-sized lake in the middle of the desert.
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The place was well lit up from inside, and armed guards in pairs continuously patrolled the perimeter all the way out to five hundred yards. Infrared and motion detectors monitored every square inch of ground out to one mile, and active radar based at the five-thousand-foot paved runway a half mile to the west watched the sky out to fifty miles. The compound had its own cell phone tower, and two secure microwave links via satellite with advanced surveillance units hidden in the deserts, hills, and mountains of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Tens of millions of dollars had been invested for security here; money well spent, considering the multibillion-dollar-per-year return.
María had been here twice over the past six years, setting up the drug routes in Cuba, along with coastal waters and airspace for promises not of any significant money, but for intelligence the cartels’ various dealers and distributors across the border could supply about U.S. federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities as well as military installations along the southern tier of states.
It had been something of an uneasy truce, but neither the DI nor the cartels wanted to break it. The money and intel were simply too good.
They were passed through a tall iron gate in the razor wire–topped concrete walls only after they surrendered their weapons and were expertly patted down. Even the Hummer was searched with dogs for explosives and electronically for bugging devices.
Fuentes was impressed and he started to say something when they finally pulled up in front of the main house, but María squeezed his knee, and he bit it off. They got out of the car and walked up to the house, where a short, slightly built man in his mid-forties, with dark hair, thick eyebrows, and thin mustache was waiting for them.
“So good to see you again, señora,” he said, and they embraced. He was Juan Callardo, leader of the Los Zetas cartel, whose compound this was, and son of Miguel Angel Félix Gallardo, the godfather of all Mexican drug lords.
“You’re looking fit, Juan,” she said.
“And you more beautiful than ever. And still devious.”
They laughed and María introduced Fuentes, to whom Gallardo only nodded before they were led inside to a windowless conference room in the center of the sprawling one-story Spanish hacienda-style house. Three other men, all of them dark and serious looking, were seated around an ornately carved stone conference table that had once served as an Aztec altar, bloodstains epoxied over but not removed.
Gallardo introduced them, only by single names and the cartels they represented: Muñoz-Torres of the Sinaloas, Gonzáles of the Beltrans Leyvas, and Sigfredo of the Cartel Golfo. Only Gallardo’s name was real, because María had dealt directly with him from the beginning. The others chose to remain anonymous.
María went to a sideboard and poured a small glass of what she took to be tequila from an unlabeled decanter. Ignoring the pitcher of water, plate of limes, and a small dish of sea salt, she knocked the drink back, smiled, poured another, and sat down at the table across from the others, with Fuentes on her right.
She sipped delicately this time. “Añejo, without a doubt,” she said, and she sipped again. “Herradura Suprema?”
Gallardo threw his head back and laughed loudly, while the others smiled. “Exactly right, of course,” he said. “I wish I had the same sensitivity and discerning tastes for your excellent rums.”
“I’ll send you a few mixed cases of our best, when we are finished.”
The humor left the room. “So tell us exactly what you want us to do and what’s in it for us?”
María finished her drink and set the glass down on the table. “Over the next twenty-four hours, I want your help to mass at least one thousand people, hopefully five or ten times that many, along the New Mexico–Texas border. Some of them will be ordinary Cuban citizens whom you will fly up from your distribution airstrips in my country.”
“For what reason?”
“We are going to invade the United States.”
No one laughed.
“Why?” Gallardo asked.
“For a Spanish treasure of gold and silver,” Fuentes blurted, but María waved him off.
“There may be no gold where we will be going,” she said. “Though almost certainly gold does exist somewhere in New Mexico.”
“Then why the operation?” Gallardo asked.
And María told him.
SEVENTY
The hill about a mile and a half southwest of the Fort Bliss National Cemetery rose barely two hundred feet above the general elevation of the desert scrub. Bulldozers had been working all through the night since late afternoon, and a little before dawn, McGarvey sat nursing a cup of coffee on the tailgate of an army pickup truck, watching the activity.
He’d given General Gunther twenty-four hours to complete the job of carving three intersecting trenches in the hill, and building two large mounds of dirt ten feet apart straddling the main trench. At this point, it looked as if his engineers were ahead of schedule.
Anyone approaching from the south would be funneled into the narrow opening between the hills in order to reach the trenches. Lights and large projection screens were to be set up on top of each mound, which would rise to at least twenty-five feet.
McGarvey put his coffee down and stood up on the bed of the truck. A couple of miles to the east, El Paso’s International Airport, its rotating white and green beacon flashing in the sky, was well protected by tall fences. Sometime later this morning, the manager would be informed what was going to happen in the next twenty-four hours so that he would have time to beef up his security in case some of the crowd spilled over from here.
Spread out to the south of Fort Bliss, the city of El Paso was brightly lit from the University of Texas and Centennial Museum to the west, and the zoo and the Coliseum to the east, cut through by Interstate 10, which even at this hour had traffic. But across the Rio Grande, which the locals called the Río Bravo del Norte, dividing Mexico from the United States, the city of Ciudad Juárez, with more than twice the population of El Paso, was relatively dark. And very often from even this far, the sounds of gunfire wafted across the river on a chance breeze.
Northern Mexico was at war with itself, mostly over the drug cartels’ desire to control the entire border from Tijuana to Matamoros, and the army’s inability to stop them.
The general had been out here a few hours ago to check the progress his people were making, and he’d shaken his head when McGarvey gave a couple more pieces of the puzzle.
“The border people aren’t going to like it, and El Paso’s cops sure the hell aren’t going to welcome five or ten thousand people walking across the Bridge of the Americas and strolling up the middle of Highway 54 to get here. That’s four, maybe five miles, and it’s going to take them several hours to make it that far. Traffic will be disrupted.”
“Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“Doesn’t matter, because the first time someone pulls out a gun and takes a shot, all hell will break loose.”
“I don’t think they’ll be coming across with guns,” McGarvey said.
“I’m not talking about the Mexicans.”
“This is going to be nothing more than a march across the border by ordinary people, who are coming here to stage a nonviolent sit-in.”
“For what?”
“For something they think rightfully belongs to them.”
“Cut the bullshit, McGarvey,” Gunther said. “You commandeer my base, you talk in private with the president, who orders me to do whatever the hell you want, and that’s apparently going to involve Homeland Security, the local and state cops, and National Guard, and have my people dig up a hill and set up a drive-in movie. Then you tell me five or ten thousand people are going to come here for something they believe is theirs. Which is what?”
“Gold,” McGarvey said. “Spanish treasure from the seventeenth and eighteen centuries.”
Gunther was taken aback for a moment. “There’s no gold here. Never was.”
“Was up on Holloma
n.”
“Victorio Peak. A legend.”
“There was gold there—that much we know for sure.”
“Then why are they coming here?” the general demanded. “You’ve set up an elaborate ruse, why?”
“I can’t tell you that part. You’ll just have to trust me for the next twenty-four hours or so.”
The general shrugged after a bit and he turned away, but then turned back. “Are you armed? Are you carrying a weapon?”
“Yes.”
“If you’re not expecting trouble, then why?”
“Because there’re probably going to be two people, maybe a few more, who are not going to like what they find, and they’re going to want to take it out on me.”
“Do you want some backup?”
“Nope,” McGarvey said, and now looking in the direction of Ciudad Juárez, he clearly remembered the general’s last words.
“An angry mob is a whole lot more than the simple sum of its parts. Best you remember it.”
But the rewards, he’d decided as early as Spain, were worth the risks. And if they could pull it off with a minimum of damage and casualties, nothing in Cuba would ever be the same again—not for the government, not for the people, and not for the exiles in Miami who only wanted to go home.
He telephoned Otto, who was set up in a suite at the Radisson Airport Hotel, and his old friend answered on the first ring.
“It’s started.”
“Tell me,” McGarvey said.
“Lots of private air traffic across the Gulf, landing at airstrips within a hundred fifty miles of Ciudad Juárez. At this point, Mexican air traffic control is only just beginning to take notice. But it’ll be at least twenty-four hours, probably longer before the army is sent up to investigate. I’ve tried to task a bird to look for infrared signatures across the area, but Louise says there won’t be anything in position until at least noon, and by then, we should start getting visuals. But my guess is they’re putting it together and are heading this way.”
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