Dempsey looked up again as Adamo took a seat beside the DEA strike leader.
The CIA man shook his head. “I disagree. It’s better to slip the timeline than to get caught.”
“What you need to understand is that Hezbollah and ISIS use a fractured, independent cell structure,” Dempsey said. “They employ old-school techniques like dead drops and face-to-face information exchanges that are immune to cybersurveillance. Individual cells will do everything possible to avoid communications that might leak information to our cyberwarfare community. Once certain elements are in play, there’s no easy way to stop the machine.”
“So what’s your point?”
“My point is that even if they want to advance the timeline or change the location, they might not be able to do so because of the constraints imposed by their communication protocols.”
“Granted, but let’s not forget who we’re dealing with. Al-Mahajer is a tactician. You said it yourself; this guy has successfully avoided capture for a decade. Given recent events, I just don’t see al-Mahajer crossing in Mexicali,” Adamo said.
Dempsey knitted his brow, confused. “What ‘recent events’ are you talking about?”
“DEA and the Mexican narcotics task force raided a house in Calexico with a tunnel linked to Mexicali a month ago.”
Dempsey looked over at BT. “Is that true?”
“Yes,” BT said. “But it was a different system than the one on the drawing. I confirmed that. This is how the game works. We close a hole; they open two more. It’s like playing fucking whack-a-mole.”
“Whack-a-mole or not,” Adamo said, pushing his eyeglasses up on his nose, “these guys aren’t morons. If there’s heat on Mexicali, then I guarantee they’ll look at alternate crossings. They must have a plan B, right?”
BT shrugged. “These guys always have a plan B.”
A wave of dread washed over Dempsey. “Shane,” Dempsey hollered. “C’mere, bro. We might have a problem.”
Smith stood and walked over to them. “What’s up?” he asked, his eyes scanning the maps Dempsey had spread out.
“Adamo thinks we’re headed to the wrong tunnel.” In the corner of his eye, he saw the spook bristle, before he added, “And I’m inclined to agree with him.”
“Okay,” Smith said. “But the Zeta you shot in the knee said they were headed for Mexicali.”
“Maybe they were, maybe they weren’t, but according to Adamo they’ll think Mexicali is too hot to risk a crossing right now.” He looked at BT. “What’s DEA’s opinion?”
“Look, man, I don’t know the MO for the guys you’re chasing, but I know the cartel. And if they sense any heat—any heat at all—they’ll zigzag. If I had to guess, the cartel will advise your guys to go black, wait it out, and try again when the heat dies down in another two or three weeks.”
“Yeah, they could do that, but they risk us unraveling the rest of the plan. Our targets operate differently than the cartels because terrorists and drug dealers have different endgames. The Zetas are playing the long game. Their objective is sustainable, covert drug trafficking. They can afford to wait, because the alternative, getting caught and losing a shipment and a tunnel, is just too damn expensive. For a terrorist, the short game is the endgame. If al-Mahajer is infiltrating the United States to execute a terror operation, then he has a window of opportunity that must be exploited or he fails. Think about Brussels. ISIS moved that attack forward because Salah Abdeslam had been caught. They hit Brussels instead of executing their original objective, which was to hit Paris again.”
Dempsey looked up and saw that Grimes and Mendez had joined the group.
“Why did they do that? Why didn’t they wait a few months, regroup, reset, and try for Paris again?” Dempsey said, pressing the group to think it through.
No one nibbled.
“Because they’d activated a sleeper agent who, once in play, couldn’t be turned off. We’ve seen this before. We saw it in Germany when we stopped that shit two months ago. We’ve seen it in the US. They limit communication because it makes their activities impossible to track, but the downside of this approach is limited command and control.”
“But it’s still better to live to fight another day,” BT said.
“Not for these assholes,” Dempsey said. “They plan to martyr themselves no matter what. To them it is stabbing the Great Satan in the heart and not missing the opportunity. The most important variable for them is how much collateral damage they cause, not their personal safety.”
“Dempsey’s right,” Smith said. “So if I was al-Mahajer, I’d push the timeline and change the crossing site.”
“Awesome deduction,” Grimes said, “but we have no idea where else to look. We don’t know the alternate location.”
“I might,” Adamo said.
Everyone turned to look at the CIA agent. Adamo stared back only at Dempsey.
“Where?” Dempsey asked.
Adamo grabbed a map and the two schematics. He pushed the one for Mexicali away and pulled the other one closer.
“Do you see the dashed line around this map—a fence of some sort—beside a winding road?”
“And how would you possibly know that?” Grimes asked.
“I spent the last hour online poring through maps of industrial compounds in Mexico, trying to match the layout—the large building north of two long buildings with another square building east. It needed to be on a winding road and surrounded by a fence.”
“Aren’t Baldwin and his geniuses looking at all of this?” Grimes asked skeptically.
“Yes,” Adamo said and clenched his jaw. “But a computer can’t fill in gaps from a hand-drawn schematic—assume what is missing and what is maybe less detailed—the way a human can.”
“Go on, Simon,” Dempsey said.
“So, I narrowed it down to about a half-dozen, but only two are along the border. Of those two, only one has adequate proximity to an airport that would allow them to get to it within the presumed timeline.”
Adamo tapped his index finger on the map, just south of the border with Arizona.
“Agua Prieta,” Grimes said.
Adamo nodded. “If they cross from Agua Prieta they’ll enter the US here, in this little patch of nothing outside Douglas, Arizona.”
Smith starting tapping on a laptop he had plugged into the pop-up panel in front of him. He clicked his wireless mouse, and the center screen in the bank of large flat-screens on the cabin wall flickered to life. A beat later, the middle screen flickered and Ian Baldwin’s face filled the screen.
“Good morning, Shane,” he said in clipped tones. “Problems?”
Jesus, does that man ever sleep? Dempsey wondered. From looking at him, you’d think it’s noon.
“Always,” Smith said with a sigh. “Ian, how long would it take to get a drone over Agua Prieta, Mexico? It’s located—”
“Just across the border from Douglas, Arizona. I know,” Baldwin interjected. “I was just about to call Adamo back. Let him know we ran Agua Prieta through our algorithm. It looks like about a sixty-seven percent chance this is the second location based on the schematic. We may be able to task a drone. I suppose the better question is, how much time do I have?”
“Minutes,” Dempsey chimed in.
“That’s what I figured.”
“You’re in a brief with the whole team, by the way,” Dempsey said.
“I can see you, John,” Baldwin said, with a little smile. “What are we looking for?”
“Activity—vehicles coming and going, armed men moving about, anything that looks suspicious. The target location appears to be an industrial complex west of Agua Prieta. Sorry we can’t give you anything more specific, but that’s all we know.”
“Well,” Baldwin said, pulling at his beardless chin, “I can’t possibly get any sort of UAV over the site that quickly. But”—he raised a finger and his eyebrows—“I can see what satellite assets may be over the area with our friends at NSA and the
boys up in Fort Belvoir. I can also borrow time on Homeland’s border camera systems. Give me ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes,” Smith said.
Baldwin leaned in and the screen froze, a close-up of his right nostril the last image before he broke the connection.
“I need to talk to the pilots,” Dempsey said.
“Are you sure? We should wait for Ian to let us know what he sees before we divert, don’t you think?” Grimes asked.
Adamo leaned in. “She may be right, Dempsey. This is only conjecture.”
“Based on the information available to us, is this your best educated guess for an alternate crossing location?” he asked.
Adamo hesitated a split second, then, pushing his glasses up on his nose, said, “Yes.”
“Then that’s where we’re going,” Dempsey said, setting his jaw.
“We’ll get a data dump on the area and see what we can build on top of that tunnel map,” Smith said. Two of the other flat-screens now held Google Maps images of an industrial complex in Agua Prieta situated along a remote stretch of desert outside of Douglas.
Dempsey left the TOC and passed through a short hall with offices on either side. This opened into a sizable galley and then the cockpit. The cockpit door was open, the sport shirt–clad copilot leaning his back against it while blowing on a cup of coffee. The former Air Force tanker pilot looked up and smiled, but shook his head.
“A personal visit? Never a good sign. What’s up, Mr. Dempsey?”
“Need to evaluate a change of plans,” Dempsey said. He leaned in and nodded at the gray-haired, athletically built pilot sitting at the controls in the left seat. “Hey, Steve. Can we talk?”
“What’s up, John?”
Dempsey knew that Jarvis had filched the decorated aviator from the CIA after a full career flying for the Navy and then Delta Airlines. Apparently, the former Hornet pilot wanted back in the game in whatever capacity he could get.
“What would our ETA be if we diverted from El Centro to Douglas, Arizona?”
The pilot began tapping data into the navigation console at the top of the panel between the two pilot seats.
“Where would we land?” the captain asked. “There’s nothing on either side of the border with enough runway . . . oh, wait a minute.” The pilot saw something and then pulled a chart out of a black case behind his seat. “There is a field with a twelve-thousand-foot runway about fifty-six miles north and west of the border. It’s a joint civilian-military field that’s run by the city of Sierra Vista and Fort Huachuca—an Army base that adjoins the field.”
“Why have I heard of them?” Dempsey asked, searching his memory.
“It’s the home for the Army Intelligence Center and NETCOM. Plenty of runway there, and they can probably give us a secure place on the military side of the field if you’re willing to read them into your op.”
“I can read them in enough to get us in. How much extra time?”
“From here, shit, almost nothing. We’re already burning the paint off this pig to get you on the deck as soon as possible. A turn now adds maybe ten minutes, but the longer you wait, the more time you add.”
The copilot had already slipped back into his seat and was punching things into his navigation computer.
“Make the correction,” Dempsey said. He felt more and more certain with each passing second this was the right call. He was not letting that slippery sonuvabitch al-Mahajer slip away again. “We’ll work on clearances and the rest and have it to you right away.”
“Roger that.”
Dempsey turned around, and as he walked aft he could feel the Boeing banking as the pilot made a correction to the right. In the TOC, Baldwin was back up on the screen nodding, and Mendez and Grimes were crowded around the handwritten maps, which were now reproduced on a monitor with red lines overlaying a size-corrected satellite image. Smith and Adamo sat side by side in front of Smith’s computer discussing something, and in the back of the room four of the eight DEA shooters now stood looking around in awe and sipping coffee. Chunk came in with his four SEALs in tow.
“What’s all this, bro?” Chunk asked, gesturing to the beehive of activity. “Threw a party and forgot to invite us?”
Dempsey held up a finger. Baldwin leaned back in his chair on the center screen, talking to someone out of view.
“So?” Dempsey asked Smith.
“The last satellite pass is two and a half hours old and not the best angle, but there’s definitely vehicle activity in the complex, which based on historical imagery is abnormal for that time of night.”
Dempsey felt a twinge of validation at the news. He gave a curt nod to Adamo, who returned the nod. “Any useful camera feeds from the Homeland or Border Patrol?”
“Nothing yet, but they’re working on it. The cameras are pretty widely spaced and—no surprise—the facility falls right in between two of them. Probably not much help. Baldwin says he may have new satellite imagery in twenty minutes—which means he will; it’s Baldwin after all.” Smith crossed his arms and looked at Dempsey. “What do you want to do?”
“Already did it. Talked to the pilots and we’re going to Arizona. If we need to divert back to California, we will after Baldwin checks the next sat feed.”
“Okay,” Smith said. “What about air support?”
“Our best option is Fort Huachuca.”
“The Army intel base?” Smith asked.
Dempsey nodded.
“It’s the only place with enough runway, but it’s perfect. Far enough from the border to not be seen, but only twenty-five mikes from the target in Blackhawks. Simon, you and Elizabeth work on getting us air support for the INFIL—ideally we want ’60s—armed ’60s—with door gunners for CAS. Shane, please coordinate with the boss back home and try to get us some eyes and ears on the target. Oh, and also see what we can get on the US side for additional support—Border Patrol, local law enforcement . . . anything, I don’t care. Any questions?”
No one said anything.
“All right then, let’s get to work. We land in under an hour, so be prepped and kitted up by then.” He clapped his hands together. “Let’s go. Failure is not an option, people.”
CHAPTER 25
Main Warehouse, Alto Cemex, Inc.
West Agua Prieta, Mexico
October 29, 0245 Local Time
Rostami paced, the soles of his shoes making a dull scratching sound on the dusty cement floor.
The Americans are coming.
The Americans are coming.
The Americans had carried out the attack on the cartel compound, he was certain of it. The fact that Garcia had shared precious little information with them was confirming evidence. Hijjar had abandoned them in Mexico City just as he had promised, and now Rostami had no way to contact Hezbollah to learn the truth. As a VEVAK operator with years of field experience, Rostami had learned to trust his eyes and his ears. He had learned that the information people refused to share was often just as important as the information they chose to share. Had a rival drug cartel attacked the compound, he would know all the details by now. Garcia’s men would be chest pounding and brazenly discussing revenge. But the men were not doing this. Instead, they were silent, solemn, and skittish.
They were afraid.
In recent years, it was common for the American Drug Enforcement Agency to partner with US Special Forces in their “war on drugs.” Even in faraway Tehran, there had been rumors that the elite Navy Tier One SEAL team had executed the final raid on the doomed drug lord Pablo Escobar. That the Americans had attacked the Guatemalan compound was not the question—what mattered was whether they were attacking the Zeta stronghold in their war on drugs, or targeting it as a Hezbollah training site. Had the Americans already made the connection between the meeting in Al Qa’im and this operation? Had Amir Modiri been wrong about Parviz? Had the VEVAK operative cracked under interrogation and told the Americans everything? What had the Americans learned from the raid on the Zeta comp
ound? Were they interrogating the senior cartel detainees at this very moment? If so, the only advantage left was time.
Rostami had grudgingly come to respect al-Mahajer for his tenacity and intellect. That the man had survived more than a decade while being on so many capture/kill lists was itself an achievement, but Rostami also knew that al-Mahajer possessed a keen mind for tactics and the psychology of human motivation, surprising for someone who had lived like an animal for so many years. But the closer they marched toward their objective, the more impassioned and committed the Islamic State lieutenant was becoming. En route to Agua Prieta, Rostami had tried to convince al-Mahajer that living to fight another day was an act of prudent courage, all the while knowing he was wasting his breath. When the Syrian announced simply, “We will strike the heart of the devil and we will succeed because it is Allah’s will,” Rostami had known the debate was over. There was no reasoning with religious zealots, no matter how talented in warfare and covert operations they were.
Rostami had been forced to breach protocol and reach out to his Suren teams, providing them with new instructions for pickup in an entirely new location. It was too many moving parts. He trusted his sleeper agents and had every reason to believe they would be in place, but the rapidly changing plans made him worry more and more. Failure would do more than destroy the jihadist’s plan to strike America—it could unmask the Suren operation that had taken decades to implement.
He watched with irritation as al-Mahajer roused his small band of martyrs to find their courage. The man was gifted with an inspirational tongue, but if he truly wanted to serve Allah, he’d best find his way to brevity. Rostami looked at the Rolex Submariner on his wrist. They needed to go—now.
Al-Mahajer finished with a flourish, and his band of brainwashed jihadis all raised their rifles above their heads and began shouting praises to Allah. Rostami glanced at the stoic cartel fighters—Catholics every one—and wondered how many were contemplating gunning down the crazy Muslims who were going to get them killed.
Enough! You fools.
War Shadows (Tier One Thrillers Book 2) Page 19