Against All Enemies

by Tom Clancy

  He reached the meter-high concrete wall along the south side of the ditch and kept tight, shifting hunched over until he found the two main grating plates lying on the opposite side of the ditch, about ten meters away: the main entrance to the storm drains and smaller tunnel inside. It’d been a considerably dry season, with only a few shallow puddles dotting the ground and a carpet of weeds spreading up to the grating. He grimaced over a faint sewage smell that he hoped would not get stronger once he crossed the ditch.

  “ETA on the truck: five minutes,” said Towers.

  That wasn’t much time. Moore tugged from his hip pocket a portable night-vision monocular. He raised the device to his right eye and zoomed in on the grating. Through the cross-hatched pattern he spotted one of the two guards sitting beside a circular hole burrowed in the side wall, the shadows beyond it fluctuating like pale green heat waves. The guard was about five feet tall, no mask—just a shaved head with tattoos forming a talon across his neck. Moore imagined a perfectly placed sniper’s round sailing through one of the grating holes and taking out the man where he sat. Moore was a good shot, but hell he wasn’t that good …

  After a deep, calming breath, he pocketed the monocular and took off running across the ditch. He reached the grating and knew that lifting the door would cause a commotion. There just wasn’t a way to sneak up on these guys. A section of the grating had been cut out to form a one-meter-by-one-meter hatch. Moore gave it a tug. Locked. Shit. He told Towers, who said, “Well, fuck it, dude, get them to open it.”

  “Hey,” shouted one of the guards from inside. “You’re here already? You’re early.”

  “Hurry up!” Moore answered in Spanish. “We have a big shipment here!”

  Moore raised one of his Glocks and waited for the man to unlock the grating. Despite the suppressor, his shot would hardly be silent. Even though his bullet would exit the barrel at subsonic speeds—which would help in the suppression of the sound—the Glock’s slide would still make a loud enough click to alert anyone within the immediate area, most notably the other guard. The word silencer implied a blowgun-like thump, but that was a misnomer. Moreover, when you saw guys “limp-wristing,” or one-handing a suppressed pistol and firing it, the kinetic energy from the slide would transfer to their wrists and not only make the shot go wide but possibly injure them, so you always held the pistol tightly with both hands, as Moore did.

  Some might argue that the more silent way to kill the guard would be with a knife, but again, killing someone with a single knife blow was exceedingly difficult. After the first blow, you more often than not still had a struggle on your hands and several more blows to deliver while you tried to gag the guy. The whole affair was sloppy and much more dangerous—and Moore knew this firsthand from his SEAL training and from taking out several pirates in Somalia who’d each needed a half-dozen blows from his knife before they properly died. Moore preferred to take his chances with the clack of the slide and the assurance that one round would finish the job without him having to lay a hand on the man.

  A lock clicked from inside, followed by the rattle of a chain. The grating squeaked upward, and the man thrust out his head and faced Moore.

  His eyes widened first on Moore and then on the suppressor attached to Moore’s Glock. He opened his mouth to scream.

  Moore fired, the round hitting the guard just above his left eye and booting him back past the grating.

  Before the brass casing from Moore’s round could hit the dirt, he was on the move, lowering himself past the grating and down into the wider storm-drain conduit, a rectangular shaft of concrete about seven feet high by nearly fifteen feet across. He had to climb over the first guard’s body and peer into the darkness, searching for the second guard.

  Where was the son of a bitch? Surely he’d heard that round—and damn, there wasn’t time to waste looking for him.

  “I had to kill one of the mules!” Moore shouted, his voice echoing off into the conduit as he lifted the night-vision monocular to his eye. “He tried to steal from us.”

  Movement ahead.

  Moore threw himself forward into a puddle spanning the floor. A shot rang out, striking the water at his elbow. He rolled away, onto his back, realizing that if he didn’t sit up and return fire in the next two heartbeats, he was dead.

  BULLETPROOF

  Al Basrah Oil Terminal

  Persian Gulf, Iraq

  March 19, 2003

  FOR JUST A SECOND, while he was lying in that puddle of water, staring straight up into the darkness, Moore took himself back to 2003 when he was also lying on his back but submerged to twenty feet and observing the silhouettes of two immense concrete pilings that grew thicker, like the muscular legs of a giant standing in knee-deep water. The oil platform’s security lights transformed the surface into a rippling mirror of yellow-edged flashes that faded to a deep blue on the periphery. Within those dark expanses hovered four more shadows, like a pod of whales bobbing slowly on the current. An eerie calm settled over him as he floated there, his LAR V Dräger closed-circuit gear emitting not a single bubble, his breathing controlled and rhythmic and allowing his thoughts to clear so he could focus on the task at hand. The digital camera worked effortlessly, capturing images so they could mark the positions of the platform’s own underwater security cameras which he and the rest of his team had carefully evaded.

  Moore, Carmichael, and the other SEALs organized into two four-man teams had used several Mark 8 mod 1 SEAL Delivery Vehicles—small manned submersibles—to arrive at the oil terminal’s southern platform. The whole affair resembled a trampoline suspended high above the water by dozens of crab-like legs. Sweeping antennae and broad satellite dishes had been mounted atop the superstructure, along with a geodesic dome and perches for lookouts. Guards patrolled the railings on all four sides of the tower.

  “No glory in this one. We go in and take pictures of an Iraqi oil platform. Whoop-dee-do.”

  Indeed, this was a by-the-numbers picture-taking recon operation that within a few minutes would be over and they’d be cracking open some beers for breakfast. While Moore got the underwater shots, the other three men in his charge were photographing what they could near and on the surface, marking the positions and courses of Iraqi patrol boats and gun emplacements on the platform.

  At the moment, four tanker ships were simultaneously docked at the platform and having oil pumped into their holds. During the briefing Moore had learned that eighty percent of Iraq’s gross domestic product passed through the terminal, about 1.5 million barrels per day, which of course made Al Basrah a vital part of the country’s economy and had warranted an unusual presence there, as noted by Carmichael over the radio: “Team Two, this is Mako Two, listen up. The regular garrison is gone. They’ve got Revolutionary Guard up there manning the lookouts. They’ve brought in the big guns, and they’re armed for bear now.”

  “Roger that,” answered Moore. “Everyone look for signs.”

  “We’re on it, Mako One,” answered Carmichael.

  Moore had just ordered Carmichael’s team and his own to search for signs of underwater demolitions and evidence of charges set up top, along the exterior of the platform. The Iraqis would rather destroy their oil terminal than have it fall into enemy hands, and knowing them, Moore figured they’d use C-4 but probably weren’t clever enough to rig it to blow inward, nor were they even aware of expansion products such as Dexpan that would allow them to crack apart the platform’s pilings in a much safer and more regulated way. If they had C-4 charges set below the surface, there was a good chance they’d hit the panic button and not only take out the structure but kill any SEALs in the water because those explosions would blow outward.

  “Team Two, this is Mako Two, again. Got signs up top! Repeat! Got signs—charges rigged beneath the railing on south and east sides …”

  But now that was not Carmichael’s voice in Moore’s ear; it was JTF leader Towers. “The van is pulling up outside! Moore, did you copy that? The van
is there!”

  Storm Drain

  Near Bridge of the Americas

  Juárez, Mexico

  Present Day

  Moore was still lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Towers shouted again, and reality came in a hard shudder through his shoulders. He sat up and rolled to his right, just as a beam of light struck his eyes and a gunshot pinged off the wall behind him, fragments of concrete striking his neck where the balaclava failed to reach. He lifted the monocular, spotted the second guard crouched about three meters away from that circular hole cut into the wall, and without hesitation returned fire, squeezing off four rounds until a faint cry came from ahead and a lit flashlight rolled across the floor. A glance through the monocular showed the second guy lying on his stomach, blood leaking from his mouth.

  Cursing, Moore whirled back and bolted to the entrance. He seized the first guard’s body and dragged it away as fast as he could, panting and finally reaching the second guard’s position. He looked around.

  No, this wasn’t good: The conduit stretched out for about thirty more feet, then terminated in a solid stone wall. Even if he dragged the two guards all the way to the end, the simple flick of a flashlight would expose them.

  Every good ambush always included a plan for hiding the bodies of the guards you killed—thus Moore decided at that moment that this wasn’t a very good plan.

  He jogged back toward the grating as voices sounded from outside. They’d driven the van right into the drainage ditch and parked outside the grating. These guys were even higher-ranking geniuses than the two who’d been following him outside Corrales’s hotel. Or maybe they felt safe enough to make such a bold move—driving right up to the grating? After all, who would stop them? The local police? The Feds? That they operated this audaciously was unsettling, but to make himself feel better, Moore decided they were idiots, and even though his plan wasn’t very good, it’d be enough to bring down these fools.

  He climbed out past the grating and lifted his suppressed Glock at the group. He counted six young females, all Asian, as Towers had indicated, along with four boys no more than sixteen or seventeen, each one wearing a heavy backpack presumably jammed with bricks of marijuana and cocaine.

  Two men in their mid- to late twenties and wearing New York Yankees jackets had AK-47 rifles slung over their shoulders and held pistols on the group as they all stood there, balancing themselves on the grassy slope. The men were the sicarios, of course, with thick eyebrows, multiple piercings, and permanent scowls on their pockmarked faces. They’d employed the skinniest kids they could find to slip through the narrow tunnel while pushing their backpacks of drugs ahead of them. They couldn’t wear the backpacks and still fit through; they’d escaped an arduous passage by Moore’s intervention. He had read the files of other tunnel operations that included small carts on tracks (like mining carts) with attached ropes that were used to pull drugs through the tunnels without ever having to send mules through the passages.

  “Who the fuck are you?” asked the taller of the two sicarios.

  “I’m a Boston Red Sox fan,” Moore answered, then shot the guy in the face. There had been no guilt, no hesitation, nothing but action and reaction. If Moore felt anything, it was utter repulsion for these scumbags who’d stooped to this level. To aid and abet an organization involved in the enslavement of other human beings was to reserve for yourself a special hotel room located in the deepest pit of hell. The taller punk had already slid his door key past the electronic swipe and now inhaled fire.

  As the women screamed and the boys darted back for the van, Moore turned his Glock on the second guy, who had a room reserved next to his buddy.

  The punk raised his gun.

  Moore pulled his trigger.

  And the sicario fired a half-second afterward.

  But Moore was already jerking back as the second guy spun sideways and collapsed, only to go rolling down the ditch and back toward the van. He’d taken a round in the head.

  Towers, who was presumably watching it all go down from the other side of the ditch, spoke rapidly over the radio: “Get the women to go through the tunnel. We can’t do anything to help them till they get to the other side. I’ll get down there and take care of the bodies.”

  “Okay,” grunted Moore.

  “Get those backpacks loaded into the van,” he ordered the boys. “Right now! Then I want all of you back here! I’m a good guy. I’m sending you through the tunnel! I’m a good guy. Let’s go!”

  As the boys rushed back to the truck, Moore began collecting the weapons from the two sicarios, lest any of his captives decide to do the same. The girls hurried up and past the grating and began to climb down into the storm drain. They all wore the same style of cheap, white tennis shoes you could buy at Walmart, probably given to them by the sicarios.

  With the backpacks returned to the van, Moore shouted for the boys to follow the girls, and he directed them from the rear, heavily weighed down by two AKs, extra pistols, and his own weapons. Once they were all inside, Moore picked up one of the sicarios’ flashlights and shone it in the hole.

  He glanced back at the group and said one word in English: “America.”

  The girls, a few of whom were crying now, shook their heads in fear, but one, the tallest and perhaps the oldest, shoved her way from the back and pushed herself into the tunnel. She screamed back at the other girls, her Chinese coming in the rat-tat-tat of a machine gun. Seeing her courage and hearing her admonishments, the others came forward, one by one, and eased themselves into the narrow hole.

  “When you get to the other side, you will have help. I don’t want you to ever work for the cartels again,” Moore told the boys. “No matter what they say. No matter what they do. Never work for them again. Okay?”

  “Okay, señor,” said one boy. “Okay.”

  Within a minute all of them were in the tunnel and Moore was on the phone with Ansara. “They’re heading your way, bro. They’re all yours.”

  “Roger that. We’ll take ’em quietly so they don’t try to back out.”

  The girls would be processed and deported back to China—unless some humanitarian group was able to intervene on their behalf. The boys would no doubt be processed, and if there weren’t any warrants on them, they, too, would be deported back to Mexico, which was why Moore implored them not to return to working for the cartels. The sad thing was, most of them would ignore him, especially once they understood how the process worked. They’d take the risk again.

  Moore then called Luis Torres. “I’ve got an early birthday present for your boss.”

  “How much?”

  “A very nice load.”

  What Torres, Zúñiga, and the rest of the Sinaloa Cartel didn’t know was that Moore and Towers would inject each brick with a GPS beacon so that once those bricks were smuggled across the border, they’d be immediately located and confiscated by authorities. Moore’s bosses would never allow him to knowingly let the drugs pass into the United States without some way of retrieving them, and that was certainly understandable. However, as tiny as the injection holes would be, Moore was certain that Zúñiga and his cronies would carefully scrutinize each brick for any signs of tampering. Moore and Towers would have to carefully choose their injection sites along the seams in the tape used to seal the bricks.

  “Okay, we’re good to go out here,” said Towers.

  Moore’s phone rang again: Ansara. “First few girls have come through. Took them nice and quiet. Excellent work, boss man. Score one for the team.”

  “Dude,” Moore said with a sigh of exhaustion. “We’re just getting started. It’s going to be a very long night.”

  “And when in our business were they ever short?” Ansara pointed out.

  Moore grinned and hustled off for the van.

  Somoza Designs International

  Bogotá, Colombia

  Before leaving Bogotá, Jorge Rojas had scheduled a final visit with his old friend Felipe Somoza, who had called to
say that he had a very special gift for Rojas. At ten in the morning, Rojas and his old college buddy Jeff Campbell, who’d struck a lucrative cell phone deal with the Colombian government, arrived outside the block-long, two-story shop and attached warehouse. They were greeted by Lucille, a dark-haired woman in her fifties who had been working as Somoza’s receptionist for the past ten years and was, like all of the man’s employees, fiercely loyal, treating Somoza more like a family member than a boss, to the point of handling his dry cleaning, the oil changes on his vehicles, even handling his personal schedule for attending his three sons’ college soccer games.

  Rojas and Campbell were escorted through the shop floor and tailoring area, where dozens of women from eighteen to nearly eighty wore blue uniforms and sat diligently behind sewing machines, producing cold, warm, wet, formal, and casual wear for both men and women.

  However, they weren’t making “normal” clothing.

  Somoza was known as the “Armored Armani,” and his bulletproof clothing was world-renowned. His business had flourished since 9/11, after which he had focused his attention on private security and bodyguard companies. He expanded to supply clothing to diplomats, ambassadors, princes, and presidents of more than forty nations and was now popular with individuals and with more than two hundred private security firms, as well as local police throughout the Americas. What set him apart from other bulletproof manufacturers was his attention to comfort and fashion design. He wasn’t just making ugly militarylike vests; his clothing ranged from bulletproof suits to dresses to even socks and ties. He even had a boutique in Mexico City on the same street as such names as Hugo Boss, Ferrari, BMW, and Calvin Klein. He was planning to open a new shop on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, California, so he could supply both celebrities and their bodyguards with some of the most stylish yet “safe” clothing in the world.

  The bulletproof panels themselves were carefully concealed within the garments. Each panel was designed from sheets of plastic polymers composed of many layers. Kevlar, Spectra Shield, or sometimes Twaron (nearly identical to Kevlar) and Dyneema (similar to Spectra) became part of the process, depending upon the garment’s target weight and available materials. Kevlar thread was used to sew together layers of woven Kevlar, while the Spectra Shield was coated and bonded with resins such as Kraton before being sealed between sheets of polyethylene film.