by Tom Clancy
Search teams from both the FBI and the CIA had already been deployed to find those police cars and vans. Meanwhile, Moore said he’d call his best contact in the tribal lands to see what the old man in North Waziristan knew.
He was about to do that when he received a text message from Leslie. She wanted to know why he hadn’t replied to several of her messages. He just sighed. If he chatted with her now, his depression would seep through, and he’d rather have no contact than bad contact at this point. He accessed his address book to find Nek Wazir’s number, which he had coded as nw33. The old man picked up after the third ring.
“Moore, it is good to hear your voice. And this is something, because I was going to call you tomorrow.”
“Well, then, I beat you to it. And I’m glad you’re still awake. It’s good to hear your voice, too.”
Indeed, it was. Something had happened between them. Wazir was not just another paid informant introduced to Moore by Rana; they now shared something—mutual grief over Rana’s murder, and a question that Moore had yet to answer: “What is the most difficult thing you’ve ever done in your life?”
Wazir hesitated, then said, “I wish I could bring good news.”
Moore tensed. “What is it?”
“I’ve received information about your man Gallagher, the one you said was missing.”
“Is he dead?”
“No.”
“Then they’ve got him. How much do they want?”
“No, Moore, you don’t understand.”
“I guess I don’t.”
“I’ll send you some pictures I received yesterday. They were taken about a week ago. They show your friend Gallagher up near the border. He is meeting with Rahmani.”
“I’ll have to check on that. He could be deep cover.”
“I don’t think so, Moore. I don’t have evidence. I only have the word of the men I pay, but they tell me they heard that the American, Gallagher, is the one who killed Rana. Again, I have no evidence. Only rumors. But if this is true, then he is not your friend, and I worry about the damage he could do to you and the wrath he could bring upon this country.”
“I understand. Where’s Gallagher now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can you find him for me?”
“I will press my people harder.”
“Thank you. I’ll be waiting for the pictures.”
“Of course. If there’s nothing else?”
“Actually, there is. I was calling because I think we’ve had a breach. The Taliban might’ve moved through a tunnel from Mexico into the United States; they came from a city called Mexicali into California, a city called Calexico.”
“I am familiar with those cities.”
“I think one of them was wearing a pendant, the Hand of Fatima. I’ll send you a picture. I know this might not mean anything, but could you review the intel you have to see if any of the Taliban in your intel photographs is wearing the same pendant?”
Wazir chuckled under his breath. “Don’t look now, my friend, but your biases are showing. What if it was a party of Jews running late for a bris?”
“What am I missing here?”
“The Sephardic Jewish community calls that very same pendant the Hand of Miriam.”
“Aw, shit. Am I in over my head here?”
“Not as long as you have an educated Muslim for a friend. Most likely your first instincts are correct. I will look into this. And I’ll send those pictures of Gallagher now.”
“I’ll take care of the compensation.”
“Thank you, Moore. Try to be safe. I will call you as soon as I know something.”
Moore thumbed off the connection, then immediately uploaded the picture of the pendant he’d taken with his smartphone. He sat there at the cubicle, trembling over the news about Gallagher. He waited for Wazir’s message that would contain the pictures of …a possible traitor.
Towers came rushing over. “We found the police cars!”
At the same time, Moore’s phone rang.
He recoiled at the number: Zúñiga. He motioned for Towers to hang on, showed the caller ID screen to his boss, who nodded and waited, eyes widening.
Moore answered in Spanish. “Hola, Señor Zúñiga.”
“Hola, Señor Howard,” he answered, using Moore’s cover name. “As much as I want to kill you for what you’ve done to me, for the losses I’ve incurred because of you, I have a very lucrative proposition.”
Moore’s phone beeped with an incoming message: Wazir’s e-mail. He winced and said, “Go ahead, señor.”
“Sitting in my living room right now is Mr. Dante Corrales. He tells me the cartel killed his woman and that he wants to join me. He says he has secrets about the cartel. He says he can help me undermine them and bring down Rojas. He says he has the evidence to do that.”
“Then he’s a very valuable asset—to both of us.”
“Ah, more so to you. I will deliver him to you under two conditions. In this economy, I think he’s worth about one million dollars. And I want the assurance that neither myself nor my people or organization will be touched.”
Moore held back his grin. No way in hell was the American government going to hand over $1 million to a Mexican drug cartel. At this point Moore would determine if Corrales was worth anything, and if he was, then other arrangements would be made to extract him from Zúñiga, a thug who’d already been paid well enough.
“Señor, that’s a lot of money, and we don’t really know how useful Corrales will be, so here’s what I suggest: a meeting between the three of us. We need Corrales to prove his value to us, and I have several methods we can use to better vet him. If all goes well, I will arrange payment and take possession of the man. If we both agree that he is not as useful as we thought, then we might turn him over to the authorities and consider new plans to take down the Juárez Cartel. What happened in San Cristóbal was nothing we could have anticipated. You need to believe that.”
“I’ll decide what I need to believe. And I want to remind you that we can’t turn over Corrales to the Federal Police. He has too many allies there.”
“We’ll turn him over to the Mexican Navy. I’ve heard they’re the only ones who can be trusted.”
Zúñiga chuckled. “I’ve heard that, too. How soon can you be here?”
“By tonight. Let’s say eight p.m. I’ll meet you at the usual place for the transfer. Their spotters will still be watching us.”
“Very good, señor. I’ll have my people meet you there.”
Moore thumbed off the phone. “Corrales went to Zúñiga. We might have a deal—and a key witness.”
“Excellent.”
“Let me finish before you tell me about the cars. Better yet, let me show you something.”
Moore opened up the message and enlarged one of the photographs taken with a long lens and clearly showing Gallagher sitting outside a tent in the hills of Waziristan beside Rahmani. Wazir’s people had gathered remarkable intel, all right, and the image sent chills through Moore, who’d known Gallagher for years and had even run a few joint operations with him, including their mission to take Colonel Khodai into their protection. Wazir had said that Rahmani’s people were responsible for murdering the colonel; consequently, Moore might’ve been set up from the beginning by his “buddy” Gallagher.
“The guy on the left is a colleague of mine. I need to send this to O’Hara. This guy might be dirty, and if that’s the case, he’s got access to our intel. Not sure how much he’s feeding them, but this is …” Moore gasped as the enormity finally hit him. “This is fucking huge.”
Towers swore to himself in disbelief. “Send those pics up the pipe, then we’ll talk about your meeting with Zúñiga.”
“The cars?”
“We think they split up after leaving the house, but they all wound up heading south, got onto Second Street, then drove to the airport. We found all four vehicles inside a hangar on the southeast side. They’re not registered to Calex
ico police. They were all stolen and repainted professionally to resemble police vehicles. The paint was still tacky on a couple of them. Employees have no idea how the vehicles got there and didn’t see anyone. We’ll be hitting up all the auto-body and paint shops in the area.”
“Records of flights out?”
“We’ll get ’em, but the FAA only has docs on two-thirds of all small planes—and you know that if our boys flew out of there, it was on a plane whose registry we can’t track.”
“Right …”
“I want to believe you’re wrong. This is a bunch of mules with a good escape plan. They’ve stolen the drugs and are trying to sell them. It’s nothing more than that.”
“We’ll see what the DNA says.”
“I hope it’s negative.”
Moore snorted. “Otherwise we’ve let a group of terrorists slip right past us, and they’re now in the United States, which, in my humble opinion, is a slightly bigger problem than taking down Jorge Rojas.”
Towers leaned in closer to Moore. “May I remind you that you’re the counterterrorism expert. So I want to know, then, who the hell those bastards are and what they’re doing right now.”
“I’m already on it. And maybe our boy Corrales knows something.”
Towers’s phone rang. Moore listened in and heard enough: big shooting at a pharmacy in Juárez. Local police IDed one of the bodies as Pablo Gutiérrez, the scumbag who murdered that FBI agent who was a friend of Ansara’s.
“So they got Pablo,” said Moore. “Who do you think did it?”
“I think his own people. They’re on the hunt for Corrales, and Pablo was with that gang of sicarios.”
“Well, you know how you find out?” Moore asked. “Everyone around Corrales dies as they home in on their target.”
Within thirty minutes Moore had a video conference with Chief Slater and Deputy Director O’Hara regarding the photos of Gallagher, who they confirmed was not working any deep-cover operation and had, for all intents and purposes, gone rogue. Whether he was on the Taliban’s payroll, the cartel’s, or even the Pakistan Army’s remained to be seen, but operatives there were issued orders to capture or kill him. All of his access codes to the Agency’s databases had been erased within twenty-four hours of his disappearance, but Gallagher was an accomplished hacker, who not only knew his way around the Agency’s computer and communications systems but may not, as Slater had speculated, have been working alone.
The DNA results had come back and had identified Moore and Rueben, but DNA from a third subject had been detected, possibly Middle Eastern or sub-Saharan African. While standing inside the step van, Moore showed one of the techs some of the pictures that Wazir had sent to him.
“Probably this guy,” said the tech, tapping his finger on the photo of Mullah Abdul Samad. “He’d fit pretty closely.” Moore stared hard at the picture for any sign of a necklace or pendant, although the necklace might’ve been tucked under Samad’s shirt.
He turned to Towers. “You’re still not buying this?”
“All right, I’m buying. And now excuse me while I go throw up.”
Moore sighed and said, “Mind if I join you?”
They left the van and headed back into the office building, where ATF Agent Whittaker was waiting for them.
“Back from Minnesota with good news,” he began. “The other part of the weapons cache was seized.”
“Excellent,” said Towers; then he read something from his smartphone. “And I just got some intel right here. Juárez police captured the second cache from the Ford Explorer, and they busted three sicarios and killed two.”
“Did they recover the money?” asked Whittaker.
“I’m not sure. Two guys fled on foot. Money could be with them. They’re still looking for them.”
“You think if the Juárez police bust them with the money we’re going to get it back?” Moore asked.
Whittaker gave a resigned sigh. “Good point. This ain’t Kansas, and it ain’t Minnesota.”
Delicias Police Station
Juárez, Mexico
It was five p.m., and Inspector Alberto Gómez had just left the station. He was walking toward his sedan in the dirt parking lot out back. He’d just received a call on his second line from Dante Corrales, who said he was at Zúñiga’s ranch house, that the cartel knew he was there, and that he feared an attack. He wanted Gómez’s federal troops to be put in place to aid Zúñiga’s security team. Gómez had felt torn over that decision but had decided to dispatch two units to the perimeter, four men in all.
The cinder-block wall to his left, repainted last week to cover the splotches of graffiti, had once more been stained by young thugs with their spray cans. He shook his head in disgust, opened the car door, then climbed inside.
He reached down to put the key in the ignition when a hard tap came on the glass. He glanced over and saw a gun, a Glock with a suppressor attached, pointed at his face.
“Open the window,” ordered the man outside, who was dressed in black jeans, a black shirt, and a long leather jacket. Gómez could not yet see his face.
He inserted the key in the ignition, thought of firing up the car and screeching out of there, but a scintilla of curiosity nagged him—that and the fear of being shot in the head. He hit the button, and the window scrolled down, allowing his assailant to press the gun deeper into his head. “You know this is a police station, right?”
“I know. But what I got in front of me is hardly a policeman. Hardly. Your weapon.”
Gómez turned his gaze higher. The man was in his forties, with slightly dark skin, unshaven, with thick black hair pulled into a ponytail. His Spanish was good, but he was not Mexican. A weird light burned in his eyes.
“That’s it,” said the man. “Very slowly take it out and hand it over to me.”
Gómez complied, and the man tucked the pistol into his waistband.
“Open the back door.”
Again, Gómez complied, and the man climbed into the backseat and shut the door. “Drive.”
“May I ask where we’re going?”
“Just pull out of the parking lot and get on the road.”
“And if I refuse?”
The man’s voice turned dark. “Then I’m going to blow your brains out all over this car, and I won’t think twice about it. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
Gómez pulled out of the lot and headed down the street, into very light traffic.
“I’m going to ask you a simple question: Did you order her death?”
“Whose death?”
“Gloria’s.”
“I’m not telling you anything.”
“You will. To save your family.”
Gómez stiffened. “Who are you?”
“Just tell me that you ordered her death, and your family lives. It’s as simple as that. It’s too late for you, but I’ll spare them. You’ve spent your entire life providing for them, protecting them, pretending to be a model citizen, when you’ve been in bed with the Juárez Cartel for many, many years.”
Gómez couldn’t help himself. He screamed, “Who the fuck are you?”
“DID YOU ORDER HER DEATH?”
“It doesn’t matter!”
The man fired his pistol just over Gómez’s shoulder, the round punching a neat hole in the windshield, the crack still loud enough to make Gómez wince, his ear now ringing in pain.
“DID YOU ORDER HER DEATH?”
“If I admit that, you’ll leave my family alone?”
“I promise.”
“Then okay, I ordered her death. It was me.” Gómez began to choke up.
“Pull over.”
He did, and something white flashed in his rearview mirror. A van. Men wearing black fatigues and helmets and carrying high-powered rifles were already flanking the car, their weapons trained on him. They weren’t Federal Police. No patches of any kind.
“Who are you?” Gómez asked again.
“I’m a friend of
the lady you had killed. She was an intelligence agent of the United States of America.”
Gómez closed his eyes, and his shoulders slumped. He raised his palms in the air. “It’s much worse than I thought.”
“Oh, yes,” said the man. “Much worse.”
Moore climbed out of the car as the men behind him cuffed Gómez and escorted him toward the van. Towers was waiting for him, his gaze sweeping the rooftops for spotters. Moore unclipped the digital recorder from his inside breast pocket and handed it to his boss. “This, along with the evidence that Gloria gathered, should be more than enough. How many do you think he can hand us?”
“I think he’s a talker,” said Towers. “I think he’s going to do very well for us. And I appreciate you exercising so much reserve. I would’ve shot the motherfucker myself.”
“Look at this,” Moore said, holding up his trembling hand. “This is me still wanting to shoot him.”
Towers slapped a palm on his shoulder. “We needed some good news today. Now you can get something to eat before your big meeting.” He checked his watch. “Damn, we need to move.”
Cereso Prison
Juárez, Mexico
Prison Director Salvador Quiñones missed the phone call from Fernando Castillo because he’d been down in the courtyard, making sure none of his guards shot any of the rioting inmates there. As skirmishes went, this one had been small, only a dozen or so inmates involved, one of whom had murdered Felix, the ice-cream vendor, a fifty-nine-year-old father of three who did nothing more than make broken men happy with cold treats. One of the newest punks had stabbed him. Damned shame.