“Are you questioning the Bureau’s generosity, Special Agent Royale?”
“No, sir. Serving my country is reward enough for me. Just don’t tell me how much your bonus was.”
“Don’t worry about that. By the way, Beth, I really enjoyed you calling me ‘Mr. Timmins’ and ‘sir.’”
“Gee, that’s great, Ben. I hope you won’t be crushed when it never happens again.”
Chapter Eleven
Abdallah Karim Nimri carefully watched every move the men in black made.
The leaders checked the four black Ford Expeditions. They checked the cargo. Then they checked each man, his equipment, and his weapons.
They were all wearing black military-style fatigues. Nimri stood out among them in his jeans and T-shirt. The last thing they did before moving out was check all their radios. Nimri noticed that they had top-of-the-line equipment. Each SUV carried two walkie-talkies, a citizens band radio, and a scanner.
It was as professional a mission preparation as any Nimri had seen. These Mexicans reminded him of Chechens.
Nimri got into the backseat of one of the Expeditions. No interior lights came on when the doors were opened. All the vehicles wore Texas license plates. Sitting beside him was a grinning teenager with a loaded 7.62mm FN MAG machine gun resting on his lap.
The driver and the leader slammed the doors behind them. The leader was named Rafael, a handsome man in his late thirties with distinguished streaks of gray in his hair, a dark tan, and straight, brilliantly white teeth.
He leaned over the front seat. “You understand,” he said to Nimri. “You’re here only to observe. So you sit and observe. You don’t do anything unless I tell you. We run into trouble, stay in the car unless I tell you.” He knocked on the window. “Bulletproof.”
“Against rifles?” said Nimri.
“That’s all we need,” said Rafael. He wedged a folding stock AKM rifle between the windshield and the dashboard. The lighter, modernized version of the AK-47. Almost identical visually, seven versus nine and a half pounds. Only poor countries like Pakistan used the old AK-47 anymore.
“You like the Kalashnikov?” Nimri asked. He hadn’t been expecting to see any in Mexico.
“It penetrates cars,” Rafael said. “The M-16 doesn’t.”
“Hard to come by?” said Nimri.
“Not for us. They come up from Nicaragua and Colombia.”
“If there’s trouble,” said Nimri, “I know how to use one.”
Rafael nodded. “Only if I tell you.”
“I understand.”
“Your English is good,” said Rafael.
“Thank you, so is yours.” They had discovered it was their only common language.
“Where did you learn it?” Rafael asked.
“University.”
“Where?”
Nimri ignored the question.
Rafael smiled. “Okay. I learned mine at Fort Benning.”
“Fort Benning?”
“Georgia. School of the Americas.”
Nimri of course knew that the founding members of this gang, Los Zetas, had originally been soldiers in the GAFES, which translated as the Special Air Mobile Force Group. Or more accurately, the Mexican Army Airborne Special Forces Group. Before they’d deserted in 1991 and become the enforcers for the Gulf Cartel.
“The Mexican Army trained us,” said Rafael. “Then the gringo Special Forces trained us. Then we trained our sons and nephews. Los Zetitas.” He flicked a stern, parental glance in the direction of the machine gun–toting teenager sitting beside Nimri.
The U.S. Army Special Forces had trained GAFES to intercept drugs. Such skills were readily transferable, and Nimri imagined that the other side paid much better. Los Zetas took their name from their unit radio code. There had been sixty-eight founding members, now known as The Black Commandos, and the gang currently numbered more than 700, including former Mexican military and federal police officers. Nimri had been told that they operated training camps in Tamaulipas and Michoacán, where they taught a six-week course in weapons, tactics, and intelligence gathering. “Very professional,” he said.
But Rafael was listening intently to a stream of Spanish coming over the radio.
He spoke a command, the garage doors opened, and the vehicles pulled out into the Mexican night. A patrol car of the Nuevo Laredo police department appeared in front of them. As an escort. This was how it used to be in Afghanistan, Nimri thought wistfully. So much easier when you controlled a country. A pity it would be many years before Mexico found Islam.
The SUVs were moving on column, with great dispersion between them. Mexicans were all watching the streets carefully. Nimri said nothing, not wanting to distract them. Los Zetas and the Gulf Cartel had been fighting a bloody gang war with the rival Sinaloa Cartel for control of the border region. Los Zetas took 10 percent from each drug or human smuggling shipment, the ones that they didn’t run themselves. Previously these people had paid protection money to local, state, and federal Mexican officials. It was measure of their power, and violence, that now all that money went to Los Zetas. Those who didn’t want to pay ended up dead.
Once they were outside Nuevo Laredo everyone relaxed and the column of SUVs tightened up. They drove northwest on Highway 2. The terrain was relatively flat, with a few slight rolling hills. Dry land, arid desert scrub. The farther they drove, the fewer lights from dwellings could be seen off in the distance.
They drove for a half hour at considerable speed. Then pulled off the highway onto a dirt road. All five vehicles stopped.
From his window Nimri watched them take two motorcycles from the back of one of the Expeditions. Dirt bikes. The drivers donned helmets with something attached to the front. Nimri was puzzled until he realized it was night vision goggles. This was confirmed when the dirt bikes sped off into the darkness, showing no lights at all.
“Reconnaissance?” he asked Rafael.
“Reconnaissance.”
They waited for another half hour. To let the bikes get out ahead and make sure the route was clear, Nimri thought.
“We’ll cross soon,” said Rafael. “If anything happens on the other side, stay in the car. If anything happens to the car, stay with me. If anything happens to me, go with them.” He gestured toward the driver and machine gunner. “If all else fails, run to one of the other cars. If you lose everyone, then get clear. Follow the North Star. Don’t bother to hide. Give yourself up to the Border Patrol.”
“You must be joking,” said Nimri. Give himself up to the American Border Patrol. What an idea.
“I do not joke. Your documents are clean, yes?”
“Belgian.”
“No problem, then. Do not let them know you speak English. They will take you to their station and check to see if the name in your passport is in their computers. If it is not, they will issue you a summons to appear in immigration court and let you go.”
“Now you are joking.”
“No, this is the way the gringos do it.”
“Even for an Arab?”
“We have brought Arabs across the border before. As long as your name and fingerprints are not in the computer, they will let you go. The gringos catch a million a year coming across the border. They do not have a million jail cells. The Border Patrol calls it ‘catch and release.’”
“Catch and release?”
“You know fishing, eh?”
“No.”
“Okay, you catch your fish, you have your sport, you put it back into the water. Catch and release.”
Incredible. “You are not joking with me?”
“On my life, no.”
Nimri cursed himself for not thinking of this years before.
A call came over the radio, and all the Mexicans donned night vision goggles. Rafael handed a pair to Nimri. “So you can keep watch for us out your side.”
Nimri had never worn them before. The young machine gunner showed him how to don them, turn them on, adjust and focus them.
It was incredible. Nimri kept lifting them up and down, to go from inky black night to able to see everything. No wonder the Americans had been unstoppable in the Afghan darkness.
The world revealed itself in different shades of green, clear but with a fine snow like a television set with imperfect reception. Like looking through a tunnel, the image seeming to float as he turned his head.
He soon forgot how far the goggles extended from his face, and the end hit the window with a clank. All the Mexicans laughed. Nimri burned with embarrassment.
“A quarter moon is not perfect for the goggles,” said Rafael. “They intensify what light there is: stars, moon, whatever. But never forget the gringos use them also. Along with thermal imagers that see the heat.”
So the image could be better than this? Amazing.
The police car remained behind. The four Expeditions were moving along the dirt road without any headlights.
The brush became higher and thicker; the dirt road bumpier and narrower. The branches scraped against the side of the SUV.
Soon they stopped, and the Expedition in front disappeared from sight. Although he wanted to say something, Nimri knew he was not the only one who had seen it go. He had no wish to be laughed at again.
The road before them abruptly stopped in a wall of low brush. But they didn’t stop, slowly bulling right through it. An upward slope, ending atop a bank. There was water below.
“The Rio Grande,” said Rafael.
Nimri had thought the Rio Grande would be the great river of its name. But in the heat of late summer it was nothing more than a stream. The Expedition that had been in the lead was slowly crossing without any trouble.
“A few trucks full of rock, an underwater bridge,” said Rafael.
When the first vehicle had crossed they slowly drove down the bank, Rafael passing sharp orders to the driver. There was no grading or ramp for the SUVs. The bank had a relatively gentle slope, and they descended in the ruts made by the tires of the first Expedition.
The driver inched across the river, bouncing and sliding on the wet rock. They had to be large rocks—the tires would have sunk into gravel. Nimri looked down, alarmed because the water was almost to the top of the tires. If water entered the engine they were finished. Something about the bouncing and the goggles were making him feel a little sick to his stomach. He lifted them up to give his eyes a rest.
The feeling went away before they crossed the river, and he pushed the goggles back down. Off to the left he noticed something. It looked like a tall pole with an object on top of it. “Do you see that?” he said, leaning forward and pointing over the seat to Rafael.
“ISIS,” said Rafael.
“ISIS?” Nimri repeated, confused. The ancient Egyptian heathen god?
“Integrated Surveillance Intelligence System,” said Rafael. “There is a day and night camera on top of the pole. Have no fear. A disaster for the gringos. The few that do not break on their own, we break them.”
Up on the bank above them there was something tied to the brush that showed up bright in his goggles. Nimri wanted to ask, but Rafael was now talking on the radio. The driver went up the bank slowly, the engine grinding away, aiming the Expedition right in between the two markings. They went up and over, and once again right through the brush.
“Welcome to the United States,” said Rafael.
Nimri felt a thrill. The last time had been in a small boat across Lake Superior, and he had nearly frozen to death. It was much better in an air-conditioned four-wheel-drive vehicle, surrounded by armed men.
“What were those markings on the brush?” he asked.
“Glitter tape,” said Rafael. “Shows up in the goggles. No need to cut the brush to make a road for the gringos to see.”
“Then this is a regular route?”
“There is no regular route,” said Rafael. “If the gringos find this one, they can wait here for us to return for a month if they wish. Only when they get tired and go somewhere else will we return this way.”
“Then being random is your technique?” Nimri asked.
“One of them,” said Rafael. “The last in our line drags a truck tire on a chain to wipe out our tracks. The gringos plant ground sensors all along the border. They think Mexicans are children. We hire a Mexican electrical engineer to find the frequencies these sensors transmit to the Border Patrol cars. He builds us a transmitter with more power than the sensors, so as we drive through the signal is drowned out. We have people with cell phones all along the gringo side. We know where their patrols are, all the time. Someone fires a few shots in the air a hundred kilometers away, and all the Border Patrol rush there while we get through here. We use all these things together.”
“I see,” said Nimri. They did know their business. And it certainly seemed to be a business.
Once again the streamside brush turned into a narrow trail. The foliage was much taller and thicker on the American side. Vines draped over the windshield as they drove.
“The Border Patrol doesn’t like coming in here,” said Rafael. “You never know who you might bump into.”
The lead vehicle had halted up ahead. They stopped also, waiting for the other pair behind them to cross.
A quick radio message, and they were off again. The trail widened, and they were able to drive much faster.
Nimri knew they had nearly reached their destination when Rafael took down the AKM and, as all good fighters did, checked that there was a bullet in the chamber—even though he had put it there. He propped the rifle between his knees, barrel pointed at the roof.
Nimri looked up. The trees were even thicker now, and the foliage overhead much more lush. Such a route had to be intentional, to hide them from aircraft with thermal cameras.
The vehicle up ahead slowed. Nimri realized what he had been missing all this time. The brake lights had all been disabled. Not that it was a surprise. If you were going to drive without headlights to remain unseen, brake lights were also unnecessary.
Nimri hated not knowing what was happening almost as much as he hated not being in control. The Mexicans were tensed up and holding their weapons ready. The driver peered through the windshield, looking like an insect in his night goggles.
They let the lead Expedition get a considerable distance out in front. Nimri knew that in an ambush you wanted as few vehicles in the killing zone as possible, and the ones outside free to maneuver against the enemy.
A flash of light up ahead on the road. Nimri lifted his goggles and saw nothing but darkness. The light must be infrared.
They were moving faster now. The lead Expedition was stopped on the road, but with the front end facing them. There was a truck behind it, a small delivery truck with lettering on the side. Nimri couldn’t make out the lettering through the goggles.
The driver spun the Expedition around so it was also facing back the way they had come.
The youth with the machine gun got out quickly and disappeared into the brush on the side of the road. Nimri watched men from the other vehicles do the same, forming a cigar-shaped security perimeter around them.
The driver popped the rear hatch. “You can get out and help us if you wish,” said Rafael.
Nimri eagerly opened his door.
“Leave the goggles on your seat and stay with me,” Rafael ordered. “Do not wander off.”
He need have no fear of that. Abdallah Karim Nimri was not about to go wandering off into the Southwest Texas wilderness with no weapon and no real idea where he was.
They all formed a line and passed duffel bags from the Expeditions into the back of the delivery truck. It took only a few minutes. Nimri estimated 20 bags at approximately 45 kilos—100 pounds—each. A ton of drugs. He did not know if it was cocaine or heroin, and had no plans to ask.
In a way it worried him. They obviously moved such quantities on a regular basis. That was an enormous amount of money. To do the job he wanted with equal professionalism, he would have to offer a sum larg
e enough to hold their interest. The Gulf Cartel leader, Osiel Cardenas, was in prison, though he continued to direct his organization. Perhaps they required every possible dollar to prosecute their battle with the Sinaloa Cartel? He would have to think hard on the best approach to make.
Only because it was light colored was Nimri able to see that the delivery truck had the name of a restaurant supply company on the side.
Rafael grabbed him by the arm. “Back to the car. Quickly.”
There had been no lights and no sound. The security men collapsed their perimeter at the sound of the engines starting.
The delivery truck drove off first. Only a few moments later, after a series of quick radio calls that Nimri guessed were to confirm that everyone was accounted for, the convoy pulled out.
At the next road junction they turned away from their original route in. Never take the same route coming and going, Nimri thought. Though he neither saw nor heard them, he imagined the dirt bikes were out ahead.
By now the bouncing of the SUV and his lack of familiarity with the goggles had left him seriously sick to his stomach. Nimri knew he could not vomit in front of these men—they would take it as evidence of fear and he would be ruined. He removed the goggles and leaned back in his seat, keeping his eyes closed. Breathing through his nose seemed to help.
As did turning his thoughts to the problem at hand. Los Zetas had to be a part of his plan. To do it himself would be reckless, too much risk of failure. These men knew the terrain; they had their routes prepared; they knew the American border security arrangements. They had intelligence and reconnaissance resources he could not hope to match. And they took no chances.
The Rio Grande was recrossed by a different ford. They were third in line now, the former point vehicle bringing up the rear. The radio came alive as they prepared to go down the bank. Nimri could tell by the tone of the voices that something was wrong.
Rafael snapped out orders to the driver, and he went down the bank much faster than before.
The Expedition in front of them was stalled out in the middle of the water.
The Enemy Inside Page 14