Against All Enemies

by Tom Clancy

Rojas Mansion

  Cuernavaca, Mexico

  56 Miles South of Mexico City

  Moore had chased the figure down the stairs, through the basement, and toward the pair of vaults. But then he’d taken fire from someone behind him, and that had left him pinned down, just behind the open vault door, with no clear way to swing around and get inside the vault.

  He chanced a look out, spied the guy across the basement, hunkered down near one of the cars. As the guy lifted his head, revealing the black eye patch beneath his gas mask, Moore opened up on him, a solid three-round burst that drove him scrambling for better cover.

  With a chance to move, Moore rose up from his haunches, about to sprint into the vault. Three more of Soto’s men were in the basement with him, as evidenced by the shots they now traded with the one-eyed Castillo, and Moore called to Marina-Two to have those men focus all their attention on that man. “Make sure they know I’m in the vault,” he added.

  As Soto’s men sent a barrage of fire in Castillo’s direction, Moore swung around and rushed forward, sweeping the corners, the crevices, every spot near or around a piece of furniture or behind a rug where one of them could be hidden. It was a vault. How far could he go? But then there it was, just ahead, past the racks of carpets, another door with a combination lock, slightly ajar.

  His heart raced. To hell with it. He ripped off his gas mask, needing all of his senses now. The air was good, or at least it seemed so for now. He’d trained extensively with various forms of gases, beginning way back in boot camp inside the Confidence Chamber and continuing on through SEAL training. He’d been exposed both with a mask and without. Red eyes and vomiting were often the results of a successful evolution. At least his increased lung capacity gave him an advantage. He took a deep breath, held it, and—

  Pulled open and rolled around the door. He swung himself inside, his gaze probing.

  It all hit him at once: the racks, the stacks of money, the guns and boxes of ammo at the far end, and the concrete entrance to a tunnel …

  Then another image struck like an electrical current that made him gasp—it was Rojas brandishing an AK-47.

  Reacting much faster than Moore had anticipated, Rojas threw himself to the floor beside one of the gun racks and got off a full automatic salvo.

  Two rounds hammered into Moore’s left breast, knocking him back toward one of the money racks, his breath gone, his return fire going wide and hammering into the wall of cash until he could cease fire.

  Rojas hit the ground, one elbow crashing hard, and he lost his grip on the rifle.

  Moore caught his balance and hunkered down to squint ahead, where Rojas was about to lift his AK-47, but he stopped, realizing that Moore had him—no time, no chance. He raised one palm, then the other.

  “Get up!” Moore ordered.

  Rojas rose, leaving his rifle on the floor. With hands still raised, he padded in bare feet toward Moore.

  So this was the richest man in all of Mexico, surrounded by the spoils of the war he had waged on Mexico, on the United States, and on the rest of the world. He built hospitals and schools, even as the cancer of his empire spread through those same schoolyards. He was a saint, all right, his white robes now bloody, his pockets lined with the sorrows of millions. And, of course, he was so self-absorbed that he had no idea how many people had died because of him.

  But Moore knew at least a few of them, their ghosts at his shoulders, their deaths in vain were it not for this moment, this night.

  Rojas began shaking his head and glaring. “Your pathetic little raid? All of this? Do you think it means anything? You’ll arrest me, and I’ll walk away.”

  “I know,” said Moore, releasing his rifle and drawing one of his Glocks, a round already chambered. He lifted the gun to Rojas’s head. “I’m not here to arrest you.”

  Castillo was lying against one of Rojas’s antique cars, the 1963 Corvette to be precise, dying from a gunshot wound to the neck when he heard a shot go off from inside the vault. He removed his mask and his eye patch and began to pray for God to take his soul. It had been a good life, and he’d suspected that the end would be like this. If you lived by the bullet then you should die by the bullet. He only wished he knew if Señor Rojas had escaped. If he could die knowing that much was true, then he would leave this earth with a grin after he took in his last breath. He owed Jorge Rojas everything.

  During the raid, Soto’s men had successfully captured the chef, several other servants, and a woman identified as Alexsi, Rojas’s girlfriend. Once the house had been secured, Towers, who was wearing a sling, joined Moore as they climbed into one of the civilian cars left parked around the corner for their escape. “It’s too bad you had to shoot him …”

  Towers lifted his brow, prying for details.

  Moore glanced away and climbed into the driver’s seat. “Let’s go before the circus arrives. We need to pick up Sonia and get to the airport.”

  Misión del Sol

  Resort and Spa

  Cuernavaca, Mexico

  Miguel heard the knock on their door, and when he looked up, Sonia, wearing her robe, was already answering it. She allowed two men dressed in slacks and dark jackets to enter, then she flicked on a light. He squinted into the glare.

  “Sonia, what the hell? Who’re these guys?”

  She came over to the bed and raised her palms. “Just relax. These guys are part of my team.”

  “Your team?”

  She took a deep breath, her gaze wandering as though she was groping for words. In fact, she was. “Look, it’s all about your father. It’s always been about him.”

  He bolted from the bed, started toward her, but one of the men approached and glowered at him.

  “Sonia, what is this?”

  “This is me saying good-bye. And that I’m sorry. You’re still a young man with a great future, despite everything your father has done. You should know that.”

  He began to tremble, to lose his breath. “Who are you?”

  Her voice turned cool, steely, strangely professional. “Obviously I’m not who you think I am. And neither is your father. You were right about him.”

  “I was?”

  “I have to go. You won’t see me ever again.” She tossed him his cell phone. “Take care, Miguel.”

  “Sonia?”

  She started toward the door with the two men.

  “Sonia, what the fuck is this?”

  She didn’t look back.

  “SONIA, DON’T LEAVE! YOU CAN’T LEAVE!”

  One of the men turned back and pointed a finger. “You stay here,” he warned. “Until after we’ve left.”

  He shut the door after himself, leaving Miguel standing there, in shock, as his mind rewound through everything Sonia had ever said to him, through the millions of lies.

  IMPACT

  Gulfstream III

  En Route to San Diego, California

  0230 Local Time

  THE AGENCY WANTED Moore and Sonia out of there immediately, and Towers received the same directive from his BORTAC senior administrators. While the operation had been a success, Soto, along with seven of his men, had been killed. The Black Hawk pilots and crew chiefs were also lost. Terrible news, but these were men who had known the risks and accepted them.

  Sonia was a bit shaken when they’d picked her up at the hotel, but within five minutes she was talking rapidly and thanking Moore for saving her back in San Juan Chamula.

  “And yes,” she said, “I do owe you coffee.”

  “And I will collect,” he said with a wink.

  Once on the plane, she folded her arms over her chest and buried herself in her seat, losing herself in her smartphone. Moore appreciated the sacrifices she had made, giving all of herself to Miguel in order to get close to Rojas, a man who had so well protected himself that her mission had become nearly impossible. She was young, though remarkably professional, having understood the ramifications of what she was doing and the toll it would take on her emotions.
Her level of commitment had never wavered, and early on, she had seen that her mission could lead to familial collateral damage: Rojas had condemned his son to years of investigations and probes. Who was going to believe that Miguel Rojas didn’t know what his father was doing? Sonia could not come to his aid. There was no way the CIA would compromise itself and allow her to testify in any court, open or closed. She might be allowed to testify in a “closed” session before a congressional intelligence committee, but that would never help Miguel. She knew this, knew the full extent of her betrayal. Her strength thoroughly impressed Moore.

  Towers had allowed the Mexican medics to bandage him up, and they’d stopped the bleeding, but as soon as he and Moore arrived in San Diego, he was going to the hospital for some additional care. He needed X-rays, an MRI, and stitches, since the exit wound on his shoulder was not pretty, but he insisted on having that work done back in San Diego. And so he was resting easy at Moore’s side.

  For his part, Moore had only a few bruises on his chest, new additions to a collection that had been growing since the start of the operation. With his computer balanced on his lap, he watched the Mexican news coverage of the raid on Rojas’s mansion and snickered over how the media billed it as the “shocking discovery of a secret life led by one of the world’s wealthiest men.” As they’d planned, the Mexican Navy was given credit for the raid with no mention of American assistance. Moore couldn’t believe it, but the Mexican authorities had already allowed the media to get footage of the vaults. The walls of money were long gone, having already been “taken care of” by the FES troops. The Mexican government was no doubt torn between being grateful and being furious over a rogue FES mission that had received no clearance from anyone but had turned into a remarkable find and a great public-relations story of the Mexican president’s war on drugs.

  Meanwhile, the Associated Press had picked up another story, of a government raid on the jungle warehouse of Juan Ramón Ballesteros, reputed leader of one of Colombia’s most productive and profitable cocaine cartels, with direct ties to the Juárez Cartel of Mexico (as revealed to them earlier by Dante Corrales). Ballesteros had, quite surprisingly, been captured alive, and Moore accessed a CIA report to learn that fellow agents had been the ones leading the raid on Ballesteros’s camp. Hooyah. Another small battle won.

  True to his word, Towers handed over the name of every corrupt Federal Police officer that Gómez had given them, twenty-two names in all, including a surprising if not depressing revelation: The secretary of public security in the federal cabinet was also on Rojas’s payroll. The names were not only delivered to the Federal Police but deliberately leaked to the media and e-mailed to the president of Mexico himself. Rioting of the kind that Gloria Vega had described outside the Delicias station would soon occur all over Juárez and in cities throughout Mexico, as local officers demanded the ousting of their corrupt bosses. Towers had said he wanted to force the issue, and, oh, yes, they were forcing it, all right. Gómez, who believed he was getting a plea bargain, would be extradited to the United States to face conspiracy-to-murder charges and everything else the attorneys could throw at him. Small battle number two won …

  Turncoat sicario Dante Corrales was going to be placed in the witness protection program as he continued to name names and help tear apart the cartel. His intel regarding the cartel’s connections in Afghanistan and Pakistan was, however, dated, with the leads he’d given them on Rahmani’s whereabouts yesterday’s news, according to Moore’s colleagues operating in the region. Moore had already sent a text message to Wazir to see if he’d learned anything more about the Hand of Fatima pendant and the group of Taliban that Moore so firmly believed had entered the United States. The Agency still had no leads on Gallagher’s whereabouts (he’d obviously had his shoulder beacon surgically removed), although he had been identified as the man who’d hired the kid to paint the police cars. As a field agent, Gallagher had been trained to find people who didn’t want to be found and was an expert at dropping off the grid himself. Over the years, he’d studied all the different methods people used to conceal themselves—and he’d learned which ones had worked and which had not. Finding him would cost money, time, assets, and, Moore contended, a feverish obsession.

  Sometime later, Moore fell asleep and was awakened by the single attendant who asked that he sit up and fasten his seat belt.

  San Diego, California

  0405 Local Time

  Once on the ground, Sonia said she was catching another flight back to Langley, where she’d be debriefed by her people.

  “You did a great job,” Moore told her. “I mean it.”

  She smiled tightly. “Thank you.”

  Moore drove Towers over to Sharp Memorial Hospital, a level 1 trauma center. When the nurses learned that Towers was a law enforcement officer, they treated him like royalty, and he was seen by a doctor within ten minutes. They told Moore their timing was fortunate. In a few hours, all of the rush-hour car accident victims would begin pouring in—just another day at a trauma center in a big city.

  While seated in the waiting room, Moore read an e-mail from Slater’s assistant, who said they were hoping to schedule a video conference later in the day. Moore had already spoken at length with his bosses during the plane ride back.

  As he was about to doze off yet again, a gunshot echoed as though through mountains. Moore cursed and shuddered awake. That wasn’t a gunshot, but his phone was vibrating: a call from Wazir. Moore rose and stepped out of the waiting room and into the hallway. “How are you, my friend?”

  “I know it is early there, but I had to call. I thought I would leave you a message.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Some of the informants your men recruited have brought trouble. Another drone launched missiles yesterday, killing one of my best sources of information. You need to stop this.”

  “I’ll make a call as soon as we’re finished.”

  “I can’t help you if you don’t help me. Your agency is directing the strikes on the people I need most.”

  “Wazir, I understand that.”

  “Good.”

  “Do you have anything for me?”

  “Bad news. A group of seventeen men entered the United States through a tunnel between Mexicali and Calexico, just as you feared. Samad, the man who is Rahmani’s fist, is with them, along with two of his lieutenants, Talwar and Niazi. Samad has been known to wear the Hand of Fatima.”

  Moore balled his hand into a fist and held back the curses. “I need everything you can get on those men, all seventeen of them. And I need to know where Samad and Rahmani are …right now.”

  “I’m already working on that. Rahmani is here, but he keeps moving, and as I said, it’s getting very dangerous for me. Stop the drone attacks. Tell your people to back off so I can work for you.”

  “I will.”

  Moore immediately called Slater, who was en route to his office. Moore conveyed what Wazir had said and added, “I need you to stop the drone attacks. Let ’em run recon, but no bombing. Not now.”

  “I need actionable intel.”

  “You won’t get it if you kill my sources. I just got confirmation. Samad’s already here. He’s got a team. Gallagher helped him.”

  “I’ll get with DHS and see if they’re willing to step up some operations and raise the terror alert status.”

  Specific government activities related to specific threat levels were not fully revealed to the public, and often the Agency was not made aware of every other department’s activities (no surprise there), given that deep-cover operations like Sonia’s were not disclosed to the rest of the Agency itself. Certain measures had already been challenged in court as being illegal, and the courts had yet to rule on many of those issues, even as the current system suffered accusations of being politically manipulated (threat levels being raised before elections, et cetera).

  Moore thanked Slater, then added, “It’s imperative now that we hold fire, all right? My guy W
azir is a good man, the best guy I’ve got. He’ll help us find these bastards. Just hold fire.”

  Slater hesitated at first, then said, “Keep me informed on how Towers is doing. I’ve got a full plate today, but I’ll talk to you later.”

  7-Eleven Convenience Store

  Near San Diego International Airport

  Kashif Aslam, a forty-one-year-old Pakistani immigrant, dreamed of one day owning his own 7-Eleven, but for now he managed the store on Reynard Way, barely a mile from the airport. By popular demand from a small group of Pakistanis living in the immediate area, Aslam started selling pakoras, a Pakistani finger-food snack consisting of potato or onion or cauliflower deep-fried in a chickpea batter. Each morning his wife would get up early to make the batter, alternating between the potato, onion, and cauliflower, and Aslam would bring the pakoras to work and complete the fritters in the store’s deep fryer. The snacks were such a success that the owner began paying Aslam for all the supplies and for his wife’s labor.

  After six years of managing the same location, Aslam was very familiar with all of his local customers, especially his fellow Pakistanis. Just before noon, three strangers in their early twenties had come in and rejoiced over the fritters. They were all countrymen, who had spoken in Urdu and had cleaned him out of every last pakora. Of course they had roused his curiosity. Aslam had asked them how they’d heard about him and the snacks, and they said that they had a friend who worked at the airport, but they had, oddly enough, been unable to give him a name, saying it was another friend who’d made contact. That could very well be true, but there was something troublesome about these men, their nervous reaction when he’d asked, their unwillingness to discuss how long they’d been in the country and exactly where they were from in Pakistan. Aslam decided to eavesdrop on their conversation outside the store, where they’d stood, eating heartily. He pretended to be taking out the trash, walking around the back toward the big Dumpster, when he’d heard one of them talking about flight numbers and flight patterns.