Against All Enemies

by Tom Clancy

  A van rolled up behind them, and out came two more officers with a pair of bomb-sniffing dogs. As they shifted by, Gómez’s cell phone rang, and he drifted to the back of the truck to take the call. What Vega noted, though, was that the old man carried two phones; this was not the phone he’d used to call her cell, thereby giving her his number. This was a second phone. Interesting.

  She couldn’t hear what he was saying over the shouting from the officers ahead. The canine team moved in slowly, and once they swept the area and the bodies, one man gave a wave and a shout. All clear.

  He took a sniper’s round from the rooftop to their left, and most of his head came off.

  Just like that. Without warning. Broad daylight. Civilians watching from the balconies of the apartments.

  And as the others screamed to get down, the second canine officer was shot in the neck, the round hammering him from the back and exploding from beneath his chin.

  A new wave of automatic-weapons fire came in from AK-47s that ripped through the bodies in the street and cut into the dogs, both of which fell while Vega crawled forward on her chest, keeping tight to the truck’s front wheel. She lifted her rifle and returned fire at the rooftops, her bead spraying along the ledge and chiseling away at the stucco.

  “Hold your fire!” cried Gómez. “Hold your fire!”

  And then …nothing. A few shouts, the stench of gunpowder everywhere now, and the heat of the asphalt rising in waves up into Vega’s face.

  Brakes squealed, stealing her attention. At the next cross street sat a white pickup truck missing its tailgate, and from one of the back alleys came three men armed with rifles—AR-15s and one AK-47. They ran toward the truck and leapt onto the flatbed. Several of the officers ahead opened fire, but the truck was already hightailing it away. As a matter of fact, the rounds from those officers seemed perfunctory at best—not a single one struck the truck.

  Vega bolted to her feet and ran around to the passenger’s side, where Gómez was hunkered down and shaking his head.

  “Come on!” she urged him. “Come on!”

  “I’ll call for the backup. Other units will pursue them.”

  “We go now!” she cried.

  His eyes widened, and his voice lifted sharply: “What did I tell you?”

  She inhaled, bit back a curse, then rose and spun toward one of the rooftops, where the sniper who’d killed the two canine cops had her dead in his sights.

  “Oh my God,” she gasped, a second before the killer disappeared behind the rooftop parapet.

  She blinked. Breathed.

  And was back in the moment.

  “He’s right there,” she shouted. “Up there!”

  The other officers remained behind their car doors, shaking their heads and gesturing for her to get down, take cover.

  She went back to Gómez and crouched down beside him. “We’re letting him get away.”

  “The other units will find him. Just wait. We didn’t come here to fight them. We came here to investigate the crime scene. Now shut up.”

  Vega closed her eyes, and it hit her—right there and then. She was going about this all wrong. She needed to get close to this guy, gain his trust, not turn him into the enemy she already presumed he was. She needed to be his daughter, allow him to teach her about the city, and as he grew to like her, perhaps even respect her, he’d lower his guard enough for her to strike.

  But her ego had gotten in the way, her exacting nature, and she’d admittedly screwed up.

  They remained there for another two, maybe three, minutes, and then, finally, the officers up front began to slowly move toward the bodies, even as residents in the apartments came back out onto their balconies to watch the show.

  “Is she your new partner?” one of the officers asked Gómez.

  “Yes,” he answered curtly.

  “She’ll be dead by the end of the week.”

  Gómez looked at Vega. “Let’s hope not.”

  She gulped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it would be like this …”

  Gómez cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe you should pick up a newspaper.”

  Club Monarch

  Juárez, Mexico

  Dante Corrales was in the mood to kill someone. Three of his sicarios had been gunned down in Delicias, and Inspector Gómez had called to say that he was worried. The Federal Police were watching him more closely now and had assigned to him a female inspector who was probably working with the president’s office. She couldn’t be trusted, and he had to be much more careful now that he was being watched.

  Moreover, an American had checked into the hotel, a Mr. Scott Howard, and Ignacio had learned that the guy was scouting properties for his businesses. Corrales didn’t quite believe that and was having the man followed, but thus far his story had checked out.

  While Raúl and Pablo were making a large cash delivery to a contact they simply referred to as “the banker,” Corrales was headed over to the Monarch for lunch and cervezas. En route, his phone rang: Ballesteros calling from Bogotá. What the hell did that fat bastard want now?

  “Dante, you know the FARC guys hit me again? I’m going to need some more help.”

  “Okay, okay. You can talk to them when they get there.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “Have you heard about Puerto Rico?”

  “What now?”

  “Haven’t you been watching the news?”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “The FBI pulled off another inside operation. Over one hundred police arrested. Do you know what that’s going to do to me? We counted on them. That’s a whole shipping route I’ve lost in a single day. Do you know what this means?”

  “Shut the fuck up and stop crying, you fat old fuck! The boss will be there soon. Stop fucking crying!”

  With that, Corrales hung up, cursed, and pulled into the club’s parking lot.

  There were only two strippers onstage, day workers who’d had children and weren’t shy about revealing their cesarean scars. Two other patrons sat at the main bar, old men wearing wide-brimmed hats, thick leather belts, and cowboy boots.

  Corrales went to a back table, where he met his friend Johnny Sanchez, a tall, long-haired Hispanic-American screenwriter and reporter who wore tiny glasses and a UC Berkeley college ring. Johnny was the son of Corrales’s godmother, and he’d gone away to the United States and received his education, only to return to contact Corrales because he wanted to write some articles about the drug cartels in Mexico. He’d never accused Corrales of working for the cartels. He’d said only that he guessed Corrales knew a lot about them. And they’d left it at that.

  For the past few months, Corrales had been talking to the man, helping him develop a screenplay that would chronicle Corrales’s life. Their lunch meetings were often the best part of Corrales’s day, when he wasn’t having sex with Maria, of course.

  With Corrales’s permission, Johnny had just had an article published in the Los Angeles Times about cartel violence along the border. The article focused mainly on how police corruption was so widespread that authorities could no longer tell the good guys from the bad guys. That was exactly how the Juárez Cartel wanted it.

  “The article was very well received,” Johnny said, then took a long pull on his beer.

  “You are welcome.”

  “It’s a pretty exciting time for me,” he said.

  They spoke in Spanish, of course, but once in a while Johnny would break unconsciously into English—like he just did—and he would lose Corrales. Sometimes that would annoy Corrales to the point that he’d bang his fist on the table, and Johnny would blink and apologize.

  “What did you say?” Corrales asked.

  “Oh, sorry. I received over a hundred e-mails about the article, and the editor would like to turn it into a series.”

  Corrales shook his head. “I think you should focus on our movie script.”

  “I will. Don’t worry.”

  “I’
m talking to you because you are my godmother’s son, and because I want you to tell the story of my life, which would make a very good movie. I don’t want you to write any more articles about the cartels. People would become very upset. And I would be afraid for you. Okay?”

  Johnny tried to repress his frown. “Okay.”

  Corrales smiled. “Good.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  Corrales traced a finger along the sweat covering his beer bottle, then looked up and said, “I lost some good men today.”

  “I didn’t know about it. There was nothing on the news.”

  “I hate the news.”

  He glanced at the table. The Juárez Cartel had their hands firmly planted on the shoulders of the local media outlets, which sometimes defied them, but the more recent murders of two well-known field reporters who’d been beheaded outside their TV news stations had resulted in some significant “delays” and omissions of stories altogether. Many journalists remained defiant while others feared reporting on anything related to the cartels and cartel violence.

  “I want to talk about the day those sicarios threatened you,” Johnny said, trying to lighten the mood. “That would be a very good scene in the movie. And then we would show you falling to your knees outside the hotel, with the fire raging in the background, and you …there …weeping, knowing your parents are dead inside, their bodies burning because you stood up to the cartel and refused to give in. Can you see that scene? Oh my God! What a scene! The audience will be crying with you! There you are, a poor young boy with no future who just wants to stay out of a world of crime, and they punish you for it! They punish you! And you’re left with nothing. Absolutely nothing. And you need to rebuild from the ashes. You need to rise up again, and we’re rooting for you all the way! And then there really is no choice. You’re trapped in a city with nothing to offer, with only one true business, and so you do what you must because you need to survive.”

  Johnny always whipped himself up into a fit of passion as he discussed the film, and Corrales couldn’t help but become infected by the writer’s enthusiasm. He was about to comment on Johnny’s suggestion that he was in fact in a cartel—but Johnny turned his head, focusing on something out near the main bar.

  “Get down,” he screamed, as he dove across the table and knocked Corrales onto the floor, just as a gun boomed from that direction, followed by at least a half-dozen more shots that pinged into the table and thumped into the wall behind them. The strippers began hollering, and the bartenders were shouting about no shooting, no shooting.

  Then, as Corrales rolled onto the floor, it was Johnny who shocked the hell out of him and returned fire with a Beretta clutched in his right hand.

  “Is this what you want?” Johnny screamed in Spanish. “Is this what you want from me?”

  And the gunman near the bar spun around and sprinted off as Johnny emptied his clip into the man’s wake.

  They sat there, just breathing, looking at each other.

  Then Johnny said, “Motherfucker …”

  “Where did you get that gun?” Corrales asked.

  It took a moment before Johnny answered. “From my cousin in Nogales.”

  “Where did you learn to shoot?”

  Johnny laughed. “I only shot it once before.”

  “Well, it was enough. You saved me.”

  “I just saw them first.”

  “And if you hadn’t, I’d be dead.”

  “We’d both be dead.”

  “Yeah,” Corrales said.

  “Why do they want to kill you?”

  “Because I’m not in the cartel.”

  Johnny sighed. “Corrales, we’re like blood. And I don’t believe you.”

  He slowly nodded.

  “Can’t you tell me the truth?”

  “I guess maybe now I owe you that. Okay. I’m the head of the Juárez Cartel,” he lied. “I control the entire operation. And those guys were from the Sinaloa Cartel. We’re at war with them over the border tunnels and their interference with our shipments.”

  “I thought you were maybe a sicario. But you are the leader?”

  He nodded.

  “Then you shouldn’t be out in public like this. It’s foolish.”

  “I won’t hide like a coward. Not like the other leaders. I will be out here in the street, so the people can see me. So they can know who their true friend is—not the police or the government but us …”

  “But that’s very dangerous,” Johnny said.

  Corrales began to laugh. “Maybe this can go in the movie, too?”

  Johnny’s expression shifted from a deep frown into his more wide-eyed stare, as though he were already staring through a camera’s lens. “Yeah,” he finally said. “Yeah.”

  THE BUILDER AND THE MULE

  Border Tunnel Construction Site

  Mexicali, Mexico

  PEDRO ROMERO estimated that within a week they would finish their digging. The home they’d chosen in Calexico, California, was in a densely populated residential district of lower-middle-class families whose breadwinners worked in the nearby retail businesses and industrial parks. The Juárez Cartel had already purchased the home at Romero’s suggestion, and he had carefully gone over his plans for the tunnel’s construction with the cartel’s youthful “representative,” Mr. Dante Corrales, who had recruited Romero off another engineering project he’d been doing in the Silicon Border area, where most recently some of his colleagues had been getting let go from their jobs. As the economy had tightened, so had corporate expansion and the jobs created by those projects.

  Romero shifted down the tunnel with two of his diggers behind him. The shaft was nearly six feet tall, three feet wide, and when complete would be nearly 1,900 feet long. It had been dug at a depth of only ten feet because the water table was frustratingly shallow in this area, and twice, in fact, they’d had to pump water from the tunnel when they’d accidentally gone too deep.

  The walls and ceiling were reinforced with heavy concrete beams, and Romero had set down temporary tracks for carts loaded with dirt to be hauled out by the workers. The dirt was loaded onto heavy dump trucks and hauled away to a secondary site some ten miles south, and would be used on another project.

  In order to remain silent, the digging had begun with shovels and continued that way throughout the entire operation. Romero had teams of fifteen working around the clock to drive them forward. While they were ever wary of cave-ins, they’d lost four men in a most unexpected way. It had been about 2:30 a.m. and Romero had been awakened by a phone call from his foreman: a huge sinkhole nearly two meters wide had opened up in the tunnel floor, had swallowed four men, and then its sides had collapsed. The hole was nearly ten feet deep, its bottom filled with water. The men had been forced under the water by the collapsing sand and had drowned or suffocated in the heavy mud before they could be rescued. While the entire crew had been unnerved by the accident, the work, of course, went on.

  The Mexican side of the tunnel began inside a small warehouse within a major construction site for a Z-Cells manufacturing facility. Five buildings were being constructed for the photovoltaic cell builder and the dump trucks coming and going from the job helped disguise the ones leaving from the tunnel operation. This was not Romero’s brilliant idea. Corrales had revealed that it had come down from the cartel’s leader himself, a man whose identity remained a mystery for security reasons. The “regular” construction workers on the Z-Cells site never questioned the tunneling operation, which made Pedro believe that everyone was on the cartel’s payroll—even the CEO of Z-Cells. Everyone knew what was happening, but so long as they were paid, the wall of silence would not come down.

  According to Romero’s blueprints, the tunnel would be the most audacious and complex dig ever attempted by the cartel, and because of that, Romero was being paid the equivalent of one hundred thousand U.S. dollars for his services. He had been skeptical of working for the cartel, but that kind of money, paid upfront and in cas
h, had been too hard to resist—more so because Romero was nearing forty and the oldest of his two daughters, Blanca, who’d just turned sixteen, had been suffering from chronic kidney disease to the point where she would now require a transplant. She’d already been treated for anemia and bone disease, and was going through very costly dialysis. The money he earned from this operation would surely help to pay for their mounting medical costs. While he’d shared those facts with only a few of his workers, word spread quickly, and Romero had learned from one of his foremen that every man on the job would work his hardest in order to help save his daughter. Suddenly, Romero wasn’t a thug taking a bribe from the cartel; he was now a family man trying to save his little girl. The men had even taken up a collection for him and had presented the money, along with a thank-you card, to him at the end of the previous workweek. Romero had been moved, had thanked them, and prayed with them that they would finish their work and not be caught.

  In point of fact, disguising all the dirt they were removing from the tunnel wasn’t their only challenge; there was another very serious concern: Both the Mexican and American governments employed ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to detect the cavities associated with a digging operation. Again, the adjacent construction site would help mask most of their initial excavation sounds, which were also detected by remote REMBASS-II sensors adapted from military operations and monitored by the Border Patrol. Additionally, the tunnel itself had been constructed in a series of forty-five-degree angles instead of simply a straight line heading due north. Its shape would help mask it as a fragmentary section of drainage pipes. Romero knew that all the seismic data was being recorded at the same time, even if the computers being used were looking at only one spot. Border Patrol agents could examine a set of seismic-event-density maps in an attempt to discern traffic patterns and other activity in and around the site. The tunnel itself would affect the seismic field as it absorbed sounds passing through it and sometimes delayed the passing of that information, creating an echo or reverberation that would appear as a “ghost” on the agents’ detection equipment. To address that issue, Romero had ordered and received thousands of acoustical panels that lined the tunnel walls to not only help absorb much of the sound of their digging but to try to mimic the natural surroundings as best they could. He’d even brought in a seismic engineer he knew from Mexico City, who’d helped him brainstorm and implement the plan. But soon it would all be over, the job complete, Romero issued his last payment in full. With God’s help, his daughter would have her transplant.