by Mike Maden
Peto, Mexico
It had been a good training cycle. His officers had performed a miracle, transforming young, illiterate peasants into combat-ready soldiers. When the campesinos had first arrived in camp six months earlier, few of them even owned a pair of shoes, let alone handled a weapon. Now they could fire a rifle and march in order, more or less, and they had learned to obey orders without question. More important, they shared the pride and camaraderie of all men-at-arms who sweat and bleed and suffer together.
They will be doing plenty more bleeding and suffering soon enough, Ali reminded himself. He was training these sheep for slaughter.
With his grueling regimen, Ali had forged them into a unit completely devoted to him. He’d proven to them that he could outshoot, outmarch, and outfight any man in the unit. His men wore their blistered feet and black eyes as evidence. But he also knew how to reward them, particularly on the last night of training camp.
Though it was against his Islamic convictions, Ali allowed the recruits to partake of a particularly potent kilo of genetically modified marijuana. He also issued his men brand-new black fatigues.
They were all sitting together in a circle. One of Ali’s Quds Force trainers, Walid Zohar, a tough young Azeri sergeant, taught the Mexicans an old Iranian army song about love and loss, and the Mexicans in turn taught the Iranians a song about the hardship of the peasant’s life. The drug-fueled emotions ran high as the sun began to set. Ali signaled a technician to set up the video camera. When it was up and running, Ali barked his orders.
“Get your weapons now!”
Stunned—and stoned—the boys looked at one another and laughed. The dope had made them forget that they were supposed to be real soldiers now.
Ali fired his pistol into the air. BOOM!
That got their attention.
“Your weapons! Now!”
The Mexicans scrambled for their AK-47s stacked neatly near the tents, but they crashed and stumbled into one another, cursing and laughing, until all of them had picked up a rifle.
“Line up here!” Ali commanded, pointing to an imaginary line.
Sobering up quickly, the boys formed a line. The four stars of the group lined up in the center, each carrying an RPG and a grenade pack slung on their backs.
“Port, arms!”
The Mexicans slowly but accurately raised their guns diagonally across their bodies. Their bloodshot eyes narrowed with concentration.
Ali began the familiar cadence of the marching chants.
“Where are you going, Bravos?”
“We’re going up north!”
“They put up a fight?”
“We burn ’em all down!”
“I can’t hear you!”
“WE BURN ’EM ALL DOWN!”
Ali turned to another one of his officers, who picked up a rucksack and approached the Mexicans, passing out black balaclavas.
“Put those on. They make you look like warriors!”
The Mexicans pulled them on despite the stifling heat. They stole glances at one another and tried not to laugh. They thought they really looked badass now.
“Port, arms!”
The guns snapped to position faster than the first time.
Ali ran through the marching chants again and again. The video camera caught every shout, louder and angrier each time, as Ali drove them on.
Suddenly, Ali switched his cadence and began chanting in a low voice. “Bra-vos, Bra-VOS, BRA-VOS!”
The recruits mimicked him exactly until they were finally roaring out the name “BRA-VOS!” then they broke out in a spontaneous cheer. One of the Mexicans, completely caught up in the moment, racked a round in his weapon and opened fire. Seconds later, all twenty-four AKs roared into the air, blasting rounds until the mags emptied.
Everything was caught on camera even better than Ali could have hoped for. Lucky for the recruits. Had these been real Quds Force soldiers in the field, Ali would have pulled out his pistol and shot the first man in the face for breaking fire discipline. What he should do now is run them all for miles until they puked their guts out and dropped.
Instead, Ali marched them back to town for showers, beer, barbacoa, and whores. Their skills were minimal but sufficient for the task at hand. He had forged them into a unit loyal to him; a weapon that he could wield in his war in the north, against Victor Bravo’s wishes. But he couldn’t use them yet. Ali still needed a trigger. One that his computer-warfare specialist in Ramazan would soon help provide.
Mexico City, Mexico
They had taken every possible precaution.
Udi and Tamar arrived at the Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City under Canadian passports after a three-hour Aeromexico connecting flight from Havana. But the wearisome journey had begun in Tel Aviv twenty-six hours earlier. Flying Lufthansa to Frankfurt then Air France to London and Aeroflot from London to Havana had kept them off of the American fly lists, which was important, if for no other reason than Pearce had access to all of the DHS databases. They were under strict orders to keep Troy out of the loop. This was a Mossad operation only.
Udi drove the rental car while Tamar called ahead to their contact on a secured cell and arranged for the meet-up later that afternoon at their small, secluded hotel on Sierra Madre, a quiet, tree-lined suburban street not far from the Israeli embassy. That gave them six hours to shower, sleep, and fight off jet lag before Levi Wolf arrived with the guns.
What brought them back to Mexico had caught Mossad by surprise. After penetrating a dozen firewalls and chasing hijacked servers around the globe, they broke into the Quds Force mainframe in Ramazan, Iran, and made off with a file without being detected. When they finally cracked the file, Mossad discovered an agent code name and the location in Mexico City where the video had been uploaded from.
“Maybe we should have told Pearce after all,” Udi said. He knew how much Pearce hated the Quds Force and how he would have wanted to be in on the kill.
“Against orders, love. You wanted to tell him? You shouldn’t have asked for Menachem’s help,” Tamar said. Menachem was their direct superior in Mossad. “We were using his guys for the Facebook upload question and they found it, so now he wants those Quds scalps on his wall for himself.”
They showered together but they were both too tired to fool around. They weren’t scheduled to meet with Levi Wolf for another six hours. Tamar set her watch and Udi called down to the front desk for a wake-up call as a backup. They practically passed out. They’d need every brain cell activated for the snatch-and-grab operation.
29
The White House, Washington, D.C.
It was Roy Jackson’s first visit to the Oval Office. He was in awe of the room but tried not to show it as he summarized his latest intelligence briefing for Myers and Strasburg.
“Our analysts confirm that the bulk of the Castillo organization has already been absorbed into the Bravo organization. In our opinion, the Barraza administration will soon make an alliance with the Bravos, if they haven’t already done so,” Jackson concluded. “Initial reports are that drug-related violence is already in steep decline.”
“Congratulations, Madame President. Your decapitation strategy is an apparent success,” Strasburg said.
“Then why don’t I feel like celebrating?” Myers asked.
“Because you’ve helped create an unholy alliance. Churchill felt the same way about his partnership with Stalin during the war, but it was necessary in order to defeat Hitler. What matters is that you have achieved your objectives if Mr. Jackson’s report continues to hold true.”
Myers’s face soured. “It’s a nasty business, Karl. I don’t know how you’ve put up with it for so long.”
“It’s sausage making,” Strasburg said. “Blood sausage.”
“I just hope this really is the end,” Myers said.
Strasburg nodded, but said nothing. Hope wasn’t a word in his lexicon.
Mexico City, Mexico
Levi Wolf brought more than guns to the hotel that night. He’d recruited two of the embassy security staff for the operation as well. One was already at the location to keep an eye on things.
The stolen Quds file looked legit. Udi had forwarded it to Wolf before they arrived, and Wolf had staked out the location. There was only one Iranian who regularly occupied a warehouse in the barrio known as Tepito, famous for its boxers, crime, and poverty but especially for its tianguis—the open-air markets that sold everything from counterfeit Chinese software to seedless watermelons to black-market weapons, if you knew where to look.
Wolf was certain that the five of them could take down the lone Iranian. His man on the scene said he was there now. If the Iranian kept to his schedule, he’d be there for another two hours. Wolf reported that the Iranian looked more like a businessman than a soldier and appeared lightly armed, if at all. No one else had entered or left the warehouse in the last twenty-four hours.
After Wolf briefed Udi on the general layout, he turned the operation over to him. Udi had kicked down more doors than anyone else on the team and there was no time to lose. The idea was simple enough. Grab the Iranian alive and haul him back to the embassy for questioning. The trick was not getting killed doing it.
—
Tepito reminded Udi of the bazaars he’d been through all over the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans. Places like Tepito formed a thin, permeable barrier that allowed commerce and crime to commingle without infecting the larger society as a whole. Tepito was a city on the edge of everything civilized. The kind of place where men and women racing through the streets with guns printing beneath their civilian shirts weren’t paid much attention to, much less bothered, especially at night.
Drenched in sweat, Udi and the team made their way to one of the back streets behind the markets to a row of crumbling warehouses. The men carried only pistols. Running through the streets with automatic rifles would draw unwanted attention, from either the police or the gangs that controlled this area. For overwatch duty, they gave Tamar the largest weapon in their arsenal, a 9mm Mini-Uzi machine pistol, just in case reinforcements did show up.
Udi couldn’t access Pearce’s drones without him knowing or use any of the other whizbang gadgets he often deployed. This operation would have to be old-school all the way. Udi even opted for hand signals rather than comms, just in case the Iranians were scanning for them.
Tamar climbed a shaky steel ladder and took her position on the roof across the street from the target warehouse. The Iranian’s big rolling steel door was shuttered tight with a rusted lock that looked like it had never been opened. A small entrance door fronted the main street, and a rear door opened to an alleyway. One of the security men was posted to the back alley exit, while Udi, Wolf, and the other security man approached the front.
After Tamar gave the all-clear sign, Udi and his men slipped quietly through the unlocked front door into the dim warehouse. There was an office with a large covered window and a closed door on a second-story landing. The Iranian’s shadow wandered back and forth across the drawn shade, hand to his head, as if he were on a phone call.
Udi led the way up the short flight of rickety stairs and paused at the closed door. An AM radio played scratchy Middle Eastern pop tunes on the other side.
When the shadow faced away from the door, he gently tried the handle. It appeared unlocked.
Udi believed in leading from the front. He signaled his men, then pushed his way inside, pistol drawn.
—
Tamar bit her lip. Wolf’s assurances that the Iranian was an easy target didn’t calm her fears. She’d learned the hard way that nothing was ever easy in this business, but she knew that her husband was a pro. The team had broken in thirty seconds ago, but it seemed like a lifetime to her because she couldn’t see or hear what was going on inside.
Then gunfire. Like hammers banging on sheet metal.
Tamar guessed fifty shots, mostly pistols, but at least one automatic rifle firing three-round bursts. As quickly as it had started, the shooting stopped, but Tamar was already sliding down the ladder fireman-style. She dropped the last four feet to the concrete and raced across the street, bursting through the entrance door just in time to see a man at the rear exit turn and open fire at her.
The door frame shattered by her face and she flinched as a jagged splinter tore into her cheek. She dropped to one knee and fired back, but the man had already fled. Something caught her eye. She glanced up at the office. Wolf’s leg had caught between the stairs. The rest of his swinging torso hung upside down off of the staircase, facing her, arms reaching for the floor, like a man forever falling, chest clawed open, face masked in seeping blood.
Tamar dashed for the rear exit, ducked low in the frame, and turned the corner, leading with her weapon.
No one in the alley. Alive.
Just the wide-eyed corpse of one of the security men, his jaw shot away, belly split open to the fetid air.
Tamar turned back and raced up the rickety stairs two at a time and dashed into the office, fearing the worst.
She found it.
Her Nikes splashed in blood. The other security man was dead on the floor, shredded by large-caliber slugs in close quarters.
But Udi was gone.
Coronado, California
It was still dark outside. Pearce could hear the waves crashing on the beach below, hissing as they raced away.
He had just put the water on to boil for his first cup of tea when his phone rang. He read the caller ID. Picked up.
“Tamar?”
Sobbing on the other end. Finally, “Troy . . .”
She filled in the details. Couldn’t find Udi. Couldn’t call the cops. Tried everything. No one else to turn to. “I’m sorry—”
“Forget that. Are you at the embassy?”
“No.”
“Are you secure?”
“Yes.”
“Stay put. I’ll call you back.”
“Udi . . .”
“I know.” Pearce clicked off. Speed-dialed Early. “Need a favor.”
Early knew that tone of voice. “Name it.”
Pearce named it.
Early laughed. “Is that all?”
“Since you’re asking.” Pearce named two more. Called Ian, then Judy. Texted Tamar when and where to meet him.
Prayed he wasn’t too late.
30
On board the Pearce Systems HondaJet
Thirty minutes later, Judy banked the HondaJet away from San Diego onto a southeastern course for Mexico City. Pearce tapped on the iPad he was using to zero in on his missing friend.
“So, how did you find Udi?”
“Uniquely coded carbon nanotube transponder implants. Ian’s jacked into an air force recon satellite and tracked the signature.” Pearce zipped open a small tactical pack. “I’ve implanted all of my people with them for situations like this.”
“That’s cool.” Then it hit her. “Wait, you just said ‘my people.’”
“Yes. You have them, too.”
“I never gave you permission—”
“Here.” Pearce held out a Glock 19 pistol.
Her face soured. She touched her stomach. Felt queasy, violated. “How?”
Pearce pressed the weapon closer to her. “You’re gonna need this.”
Judy pushed it away. “You know I don’t do guns,” Judy said.
“We’re not exactly going to Bible study.”
“Don’t do those, either.”
Pearce thought about pressing the issue but let it drop. Judy had lost her faith years ago, but not her moral sensibilities. Her only religion now was flying.
He shoved the 9mm pistol back in the bag. “I don�
�t make any apologies for protecting my people.”
“We’re gonna have to talk when this is all over.”
“ETA?”
“Ten-thirteen, local.”
Pearce glanced at the instrument panel. Judy’s Polaroid was missing. He hoped that wasn’t a sign of things to come.
Benito Juárez International Airport, Mexico City
Judy taxied to a stop inside a private hangar just as Tamar rolled up in a beater Chevy Impala with rusted Durango plates and a scorpion sticker plastered across the rear window.
“Perfect,” Pearce said. He’d trained his people to steal old cars. No GPS or OnStar systems to track them.
Judy piled into the backseat, wiping the greasy fast-food wrappers and crushed beer cans onto the filthy carpet with a sweep of her arm. Pearce tossed a mil-spec first-aid kit and a duffel bag loaded with rifles and ammo next to her. Within minutes they were on Avenue 602 heading east out of town, Tamar behind the wheel. Pearce was glued to the tablet while Judy watched Mexico City slide past through the grimy windshield. The car had no air-conditioning. It was going to be a long, hot ride.
—
Forty minutes outside of Mexico City, Tamar turned onto a rutted dirt track leading back into farm country. Against her instincts, she had to slow down as the rocks thudded sharply against the car’s undercarriage. No telling what damage they were doing. They had to roll their windows up against the clouds of dust they were throwing up.
All three of them wore ear mics, linked to one another. Pearce had other channels open, including Ian’s.
“In a hundred meters, pull off to the right,” Pearce said. “Let’s get a visual.” The air force satellite Ian had access to was only a signals intelligence unit. It couldn’t provide video surveillance.
Tamar pulled over and killed the engine. A small berm gave them some cover from the small farm thirty meters off of the road. Udi’s signal had been flashing from there since Ian had found it earlier that morning.