Against All Enemies

by Tom Clancy

  He also wondered what they would do once they reached the United States, how many people they would kill, how much property they would destroy. He hated them as much as the Americans did, and they thought he was powerless against them.

  But as he’d noted, hope was not entirely lost.

  What Samad and his fanatical followers did not realize was that the tunnel had been rigged with C-4 charges so that it could be destroyed at a moment’s notice, even timed in such a way as to bury anyone within it. This was made very clear to Romero during the early stages of construction. Corrales had told Romero that his bosses feared the tunnel might be used by their enemies or even terrorists one day, and so a fail-safe would be put in place. Inside a construction trailer on the opposite side of the site were three sicarios whose job it was to monitor the tunnel’s security cameras. There were nine men in all who worked in three shifts. They were also in possession of the primary set of wireless electric detonators, although they would not blow the tunnel without direct orders from Corrales or one of the other bosses. The backup set of detonators was on the top shelf of a locker inside the maintenance room. Romero need only retrieve one of them before taking the Arabs into the tunnel.

  And then he would make his move.

  Rueben sloughed off his heavy backpack and let it drop to the floor, and the other men did the same. Before they could sit and wait for the shipment bound for Mexico to arrive, the sicario who demanded they call him El Jefe had come up from the tunnel and told them they needed to leave right away. The orders had come down.

  “What about the other shipment?” Rueben asked. “I thought they needed our help. They said we’d get a bonus.”

  “Forget it. Go.”

  Rueben’s frown deepened. “What about our backpacks? Who’s coming to take them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Look, I need to evacuate this place now! Those are my orders. That’s what’s happening.”

  “Then I’m coming back through the tunnel with you,” said Rueben. “My ride’s waiting for me out there.”

  El Jefe shook his head. “Get the fuck out. You figure out your own ride home.”

  One of the other mules, probably the oldest, with a streak of gray hair near his left temple, lifted his voice: “We can’t all leave at the same time. That draws too much attention. They told us that.”

  “The fuck you can’t! Go!”

  The other men began filing past Rueben, heading for the front door. The oldest mule held them back.

  El Jefe rushed up to the mule and jammed his pistol into the man’s forehead. “¡Váyanse!”

  The man gave the young punk the evil eye for a few seconds, then nodded slowly and turned back for the door. The mules began filing outside after him.

  “Well, I’m taking a piss first,” said Rueben, crossing to the bathroom. He went inside, shut the door, and waited. The house grew silent. He turned on the faucet and called Ansara, who’d been updated and knew what was happening.

  “What do I do now?”

  “Go back in that tunnel. See if you can find out what’s going on.”

  “Are you nuts?”

  “Tell them you can’t find your phone. Just get back down there. They evacuated the place for a reason. The big shipment is only about a half-hour away. Do what I say. Remember what I told you.”

  Rueben left the bathroom and found El Jefe waiting for him.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “My ride.”

  “Go.”

  Rueben shrugged, went outside, then made a quick turn left and darted back into the bushes beside the house. He remained there for a few minutes, then carefully moved back up to one of the windows. Damn, blinds closed. He shifted around the house to the front door, put his ear to it. Nothing. He grabbed the handle, pushed open the door, then crossed to the back bedroom, where the tunnel entrance was located inside the master closet. El Jefe and his cronies had already gone back down and were headed to the warehouse. Rueben wrung his hands, paced back and forth in front of the dark square cut into the floor and the ladder leading to the bottom. He should just walk away, call it too dangerous. But would they really hurt him for going back to look for a lost phone?

  Wait a minute. How could he use that excuse? El Jefe had heard him speaking on his cell. Shit. He needed another story. He could say he thought the cops were outside, and so he came running scared into the tunnel. That was it. That would take the focus off him. He descended the ladder, turned, and hurried across the damp earth, following the strings of LED lights. And now he really had to use the bathroom.

  While driving to the tunnel, Romero had explained to Samad that the three sicarios in the trailer would be watching via battery-operated security cameras around the warehouse and the tunnel. They’d tested wireless cameras, but the signals had been too weak to be read on the surface. Two things needed to happen at once: The power would need to be cut to the monitors of those cameras, and the sicarios would need to be “separated from their phones,” as Romero had put it.

  Romero had the keys and access to the electrical terminals and could turn off the power, so long as Samad’s men could deal with the sicarios. They parked their vehicles on the south side of the site, shielded by heavy earthmovers and bulldozers, and hustled out. Samad sent six of his men to deal with the surveillance guys while he and his two lieutenants accompanied Romero to an electrical terminal located behind the warehouse. Though he was primarily a construction engineer, he’d worked closely with the electrical engineers on the site and been shown emergency procedures for cutting the power.

  As they neared the terminal, they were forced to take cover behind some drainage pipes to watch as three young sicarios left the warehouse’s main door and climbed into an SUV. Romero recognized one of them as the kid El Jefe. Good boy. He didn’t realize it yet, but he’d just saved his own life by following instructions.

  When both groups were in position, Romero opened the access panels with his key and tugged down the main breaker, which thumped, and a few of the parking-lot lights went dark. Simultaneously, Samad gave the orders to take out the men inside the trailer. Then he regarded Romero. “Let’s go.”

  Romero led the Arabs inside via the light from their cell phones, then paused before the maintenance room and looked back at the group. “Wait here.”

  “Why?” asked Samad.

  “Because I need to get the remote.”

  “For what?”

  “To switch off the battery backups for the cameras and the recorders; otherwise they’ll monitor the downloads and see that we’ve been through here.”

  “Very good,” said Samad. “But I come with you.”

  Romero shrugged. “Okay.”

  He took the man inside the room and led him past the heavy pumps they’d been using to remove water from the tunnel and toward the bank of lockers. Meanwhile, Samad’s phone rang, and he spoke quickly to his men, then announced, “Very good. The men in the trailer are gone. No phone calls were placed.”

  Romero used a key from his heavy ring to open the locker, then reached up and snatched the wireless detonator before Samad could get a close look at it. The detonator was about the size of a walkie-talkie, with a small rubber antenna. Very simple, old-school, and effective. He pretended to push several buttons, then shoved the remote in his pocket. He fetched a pair of flashlights from the locker, took one, handed the other to Samad. “Okay, we can go through now. I hope you will keep your promise. When you are on the other side, you will call Felipe and tell him to release my family.”

  Samad grinned. “Of course.”

  The rest of the Arabs arrived, and Romero led them down the staircase, the plywood creaking and covered in dirt. Samad was just behind him, a pistol in hand. They walked about five hundred feet, made the first two ninety-degree turns—a hard left followed by a hard right—and then, far ahead, a tiny light woke in the distance. As the light grew brighter, a silhouette appeared
behind it. The figure was coming straight at them.

  “Stop. Who is that?” Samad demanded, halting the entire group.

  “I don’t know,” said Romero. “The tunnel was supposed to be clear. Could be one of the mules.” He lifted his voice. “Who’s that?”

  “Uh, sorry, yeah, it’s me, Rueben! I think the cops are outside. I had to come back down here.”

  Romero hustled forward and reached the kid. “Are you sure about the police?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why are you trembling?”

  Rueben lifted his cell phone, the light playing over the men behind Romero. They were dark-skinned and bearded, but they were definitely not Mexicans. One man in the back barked something to the others behind him. That was not Spanish, and Rueben had killed enough “digital” terrorists in video games to believe these guys were Middle Eastern, maybe even terrorists themselves.

  “Yalla, let’s go,” the man in the back said.

  Now, Rueben knew that word, yalla. That was Arabic.

  With a deep sigh, Romero bit his lip, then turned back to Samad. “He’s one of the cartel’s mules. He got scared, thought he saw something outside. Maybe the police, but he’s not sure …”

  “I don’t think he saw the police,” said Samad, sounding oddly confident about that. “Let me have a word with him.”

  Romero shifted aside and let Samad squeeze by.

  In one moment Samad was speaking softly to the boy, the words almost inaudible, and in the next moment Rueben was flailing at Samad’s face and neck as the man slipped behind him and plunged a blade into the boy’s chest. Rueben fell to the dirt, his face twisted in agony, blood spurting from his chest as he then coughed and reached up to clutch the wound.

  “He was just a boy!” cried Romero.

  “And you’re just a man who will join him.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rueben said and gasped. “I didn’t want to do anything wrong. I don’t want to die. Don’t leave me here. Oh my God …Oh my God …” He began to sob.

  Romero couldn’t help himself. He kneeled beside the young man and took his hand. “Lord Jesus, take him into your bosom and protect him from all evil.”

  “Let’s move,” said Samad through his teeth as he handed the boy’s cell phone to one of his men. “Pedro, you lead the way.” He pushed back past Romero, then drove his pistol into the nape of Romero’s neck.

  Swallowing deeply, Romero released Rueben’s hand, then rose and stepped over the dying boy to forge on, his eyes burning. He’d told the kid to get out. He’d tried.

  They reached the little sanctuary, where Samad shook his head at the flickering candles and crucifixes and pictures of the families of the mules and diggers.

  Romero stole another look back over his shoulder. Samad and his Arabs were monsters, and Romero knew now that the time had come. He stopped and dug into his pocket for the detonator. And then he held his breath.

  As Rueben lay there on his side, bleeding to death, something shimmered in the dirt near his hand. He thought it might be an angel, come to life from the dirt to rise up and save him. He reached out toward the tiny sparkle and trapped it between his fingers. It was too dark to see the object clearly, but it felt like a pendant, with smooth curves and a large eyelet. He remembered feeling a chain snap between his fingers as he’d fought against the Arab’s grip. He tucked the pendant deep into his palm, closed his eyes, and asked God to save him.

  En Route to Border Tunnel House

  Calexico, California

  The cartel truck was about five or six cars ahead, and Moore estimated they were about twenty minutes away from the house. Towers had just called to say they’d lost contact with Ansara’s mule. The kid might be dead. Towers had five spotters watching the house from all angles, and thus far they’d reported the exit of a mule team but had not seen the boy. The Mexican Federal Police were supposed to have more spotters watching the warehouse in Mexicali, but thus far they had failed to answer any of Towers’s calls, their cooperation suddenly becoming nonexistent. Towers had several civilian spotters in the area who’d reported the arrival of several cars and more men who looked like mules, and that it appeared the construction site had lost power. Unfortunately, the civilians’ observation posts were not close enough to positively identify any of the mules.

  Nevertheless, another group was definitely moving through the tunnel, and Moore assumed they were additional mules come to help transport the weapons.

  Ansara was visibly moved by the news, gritting his teeth and swearing under his breath. “I didn’t think it’d come to this,” he eventually said, his voice cracking. “I was hoping to clean him up, set him back on the straight and narrow. He showed a lot of promise.”

  “We don’t know what happened yet.”

  “He must’ve choked.”

  “He wasn’t wired, was he?”

  “Just his Bluetooth. Nothing they can detect there. He might’ve panicked, said something. I don’t know yet. Towers was on another call when it happened.”

  “Just clear your head, buddy, all right?” Moore asked. “It’s going to get hot real soon.”

  Border Tunnel Site

  Mexicali, Mexico

  “I want you to call Felipe right now and tell him you’re safely across. Tell him to release my family.”

  Romero began to hyperventilate, and he fought to keep his hands from trembling. His thumb rested gently on the detonator’s main button, and a small status light glowed green. The red light would illuminate the moment he pushed the button. And about two seconds later, vengeance would be his.

  “Pedro, what are you doing?” asked Samad, his gaze focusing on the detonator.

  “I’m saving my family.”

  “And you think this is the way?”

  “I know it’s the way.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Did you think the cartel would build a tunnel like this without a way to destroy it? They don’t want their enemies taking advantage of all their hard work. Let me show you.” Romero shifted over to the wall and removed one of the acoustical panels to reveal several bricks of C-4 explosives. “There are fourteen charges. I supervised their installation myself. They will detonate in succession, sealing the entire tunnel. If we’re not killed in the blast, then we’ll be buried alive and suffocate before we’re rescued.”

  Samad’s eyes widened. “You want to die? You’re ready to meet your God?”

  Romero steeled his voice. “I’m ready—but I know you’re not; that’s why you will release my family.”

  “I thought you would be much wiser than this. You’re a smart man, an engineer.”

  “Call Felipe.”

  “I would have released all of you anyway—did you know that?”

  Romero held up the detonator. “I’m ready to do this.”

  Samad sighed deeply. “You should have trusted us. All we wanted was safe passage into the United States.” He lowered his pistol and slipped his cell phone from his pocket. He dialed a number. “Hello, Felipe? Yes, hold on. I want you to talk to Señor Romero and tell him you are releasing his family. Let him talk to them if he’d like …”

  Samad proffered the phone, and Romero carefully accepted it. “Felipe, please, release my family.”

  “Okay, señor. Okay. Those are my orders.”

  Romero took a few breaths, then heard his wife’s voice, and his shoulders shrank in relief. He kept the phone to his ear.

  Samad pointed to the detonator and gestured for Romero to hand it over.

  Romero looked at him. “What are you going to do when you get to the United States?”

  Samad began to chuckle. “We’re going to eat cheeseburgers and french fries.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t let you go.”

  “Do you think Felipe is the only one I’ve left back at the house? Again, you have to consider the complexity of what I’m doing. Now stop wasting my time. Give it to me.”

  Romero thought for a few seconds more, then
complied. Samad found the power switch, slid it off, then pocketed the detonator and gestured for them to continue. Romero stayed on the phone with Felipe and heard the voices of his daughters as well. They were all right but crying, begging him to come back home.

  His wife got on the line. “Pedro? Are you there?”

  “I’ll be home soon. Let me speak to Felipe.” Once the man was on the other end, Romero told him, “You leave my house now. You get out—and take anyone else with you.”

  “If it is okay with Samad.”

  “It’s okay,” said Romero, raising his voice. “Leave now!”

  “All right.”

  Samad raised a pistol to Romero’s head. “My phone.”

  Romero returned the phone and walked on.

  They reached the end of the tunnel, and Romero mounted the ladder and emerged inside the master-bedroom closet. There, he shifted back and waited as the Arabs rose, one by one, into the bedroom.

  Romero was about to tell Samad he was leaving when a hand suddenly wrapped around his mouth and a low voice came in his ear, “Shhh shhh shhh …”

  He didn’t realize a knife was being driven into his heart until it was already too late: A quick punch and the needling hot pain came quickly, radiating out from his chest.

  “Shhh shhh shhh …”

  He was lowered to the ground and released. He stared up at the dark ceiling until Samad leaned over him. “You’ve done Allah’s work, and you will be rewarded for it. Allahu Akbar!”

  Romero closed his eyes. He did not want the last thing he saw in this world to be the face of a monster. He imagined his beautiful wife and daughters, knew that his ailing child would receive all she needed, that there was enough money and that he had provided a better life for them. He cried inwardly over having to leave them and over the pain his death would cause. They were strong women and would continue to fight in this life, as he had. Now he would build himself a new house, engineered using beams of light in the Kingdom of Heaven. And from there, he would wait for them.