by Tom Clancy
“In the unlikely event you actually make it through the next two days, there will be a nice meal waiting for you,” shouted one of the instructors.
“We got one day left!” cried Moore.
“No, you’ve got two.”
The instructors were lying to them, messing with their minds, but Moore didn’t care.
They were held in the freezing-cold surf until they were mere minutes away from hypothermia. They were pulled out, given warm soup, then tossed back in. Guys passed out, were revived, and returned to the water. Moore and Carmichael did not falter.
When the final hour arrived, when Moore and Carmichael and their classmates felt as close to death as ever, they were ordered to haul themselves from the Pacific and roll themselves in the sand. Then came a cry from their proctor to gather around. And once they were huddled up, he nodded slowly.
“Everyone, look around the beach! Look to your left. Look to your right. You are class 198. You are the warriors who’ve survived because of your teamwork. For class 198, Hell Week is secured!”
Moore and Carmichael fell to their knees, both teary-eyed, and Moore had never felt more exhausted, more emotionally overwhelmed, in his life. The hooting, hollering, and hooyahing that came from just twenty-six men sounded like a hundred thousand Romans ready to attack.
“Frank, buddy, I owe you big-time.”
Carmichael choked up. “You owe me nothing.”
They burst out laughing, and the joy, the pure unadulterated joy that he’d actually made it, swelled in Moore’s heart and sent chills rushing up his back. He thought he might collapse as the world tipped on its axis, but that was only Carmichael helping him to his feet.
Later, Moore became class 198’s Honor Man because of his ability to inspire his classmates to keep on going when they were ready to quit. Carmichael had taught him how to do that, and when he told his swim buddy that it was he who should’ve been named Honor Man, Carmichael just smiled. “You’re the toughest guy here. Watching you got me through it.”
11 JOINT TASK FORCE JUÁREZ
DEA Office of Diversion Control
San Diego, California
Present Day
By the time Moore exited the 15, drove down Balboa, and reached the DEA office on Viewridge Avenue, he was already twenty minutes late for the meeting. His hair hung in his eyes, and his beard still reached down to his clavicle — two years’ worth of growth that would soon come off, and thankfully so, as a few gray hairs had appeared near his chin. As he navigated down the long hall toward the conference room, he stole a quick look at his Dockers, the fabric now a relief map of wrinkles. That he’d spilled coffee down his shirt didn’t help. He’d blame that on the lady with the three kids who’d failed to note that the enormous cement truck in front of her was rapidly slowing. She’d braked hard, so had Moore, and his coffee obeyed the laws of physics. While his appearance did bother him, it wasn’t on the forefront of his mind.
A new e-mail from Leslie Hollander contained a cell phone picture of her terrific smile, and Moore had difficulty purging that image as he simply opened the door and barged into the room.
Heads turned to him.
He sighed. “Sorry I’m late. I’ve been in the boonies on piggyback tours. I’d forgotten about the traffic around here.”
A small group manned the sides along a conference table the length of an aircraft carrier. The table looked long enough to support a steel-deck picnic, touch-and-go landings, and maybe a couple of Harriers. Five individuals had clustered chairs near the head, and a man with a crew cut, his hair glistening like steel shavings under the fluorescent lights, turned away from a dry-erase board, where he’d been writing his name: Henry Towers.
“What do we have here?” asked Towers, using his marker to point out an empty chair. “Are you man? Or beast?”
Moore cracked a grin. The hair and beard did suggest that he’d spent the night in a refrigerator box. With a little grooming, though, Moore would be back to his old self, and it’d be nice to actually feel his cheeks again. He drew back his head. “Where’s Polk? They told me the NCS would be heading up this task force.”
“Polk’s out, I’m in,” snapped Towers. “You guys just got lucky, I guess.”
“And who are you?” Moore asked, shifting around the table, a portfolio in one hand, his coffee in the other.
Towers eyed him with a crooked grin. “Not much of a reader, are you?”
A lean Hispanic man who had to be Ansara (based on the picture and profile Moore had reviewed) turned to Moore and began laughing. “Relax, bro, he’s done this to all of us. He’s cool. Just trying to lighten the mood a little.”
“That’s right, I’m cool,” said Towers. “We need to loosen up around here — because what we’re about to do will be tense. Very tense.”
“What agency are you from?” Moore asked.
“BORTAC. You know what that is?”
Moore nodded. The U.S. Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) was the global special response team for the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). BORTAC agents deployed in more than twenty-eight countries around the world to respond to terrorist threats of all types. Their weapons and gear were comparable to those of SEALs, Army Special Forces, Marine Corps Force Recon, and other special operations units. BORTAC teams worked alongside military units in Iraq and Afghanistan to help find, confiscate, and destroy opium and other drugs being smuggled across the border. They had earned an excellent reputation in the special operations community, and Moore had on several occasions shared intelligence with BORTAC operators who exhibited the highest level of professionalism.
The unit was founded in 1984, and within three years it was already engaged in counter-narcotics operations in South America during Operation Snowcap between 1987 and 1994. BORTAC agents were tasked with helping to disrupt the growing, processing, and smuggling of cocaine in a long list of countries, including Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Agents worked alongside the DEA and the U.S. Coast Guard’s Interdiction Assist Team.
In more recent years, BORTAC teams had taken on a broader array of responsibilities, to include Tactical Relief Operations (TRO) during hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. They provided personnel support, equipment assistance, and training to local law enforcement agencies.
Moore would later learn that Towers had more than twenty-five years with BORTAC. He’d been deployed in Los Angeles during the riots that had broken out in the wake of the Rodney King trial. He’d also participated in Operation Reunion, in which BORTAC raided a home in Miami, Florida, in order to safely return refugee Elián González to his father in Cuba. Following the World Trade Center attack, Towers was sent overseas to assist Army Special Forces personnel during some of the first attacks in Afghanistan. In 2002, he worked with the United States Secret Service to secure sports venues at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games.
“I head up the San Diego sector,” Towers went on. “But the deputy commissioner wanted me to work with you gorillas for this operation. In my humble opinion, I’m uniquely suited for this job because our mission involves both exposing and dismantling the Juárez Drug Cartel and exposing their relationship with Middle Eastern terrorists, which I’ll remind you is Mr. Moore’s area of expertise.”
“Reporting for duty as ordered—sir,” Moore said with a mock scowl.
“Now you’re playing along,” Towers said with a genuine smile. “Welcome to Joint Task Force Juárez. And as a matter of fact, I’ve been asked to make you our field team leader.”
Moore chuckled under his breath. “What crazy drunk suggested that?”
“Your boss.”
That drew some laughs from the table.
“All right, team, in all seriousness, we’ve got a lot to cover here. I heard you guys love PowerPoint presentations, so I’ve got a few of them. Just give me a minute to load them up.”
Ansara groaned and turned to Moore. �
��Good to meet you. They didn’t put much in your file.”
“They never do. Just your friendly neighborhood spook is all I am.”
“And you were a Navy SEAL.”
“With a little help from my friends.”
“You’ve been doing some good work over in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Not sure I’d last five minutes.”
Moore smiled. “Maybe ten.”
Ansara was a damned fine FBI agent with numerous successful operations under his belt. More recently, he’d been performing recon operations in Sequoia National Park, where the cartels were growing marijuana and where he’d been tracking the sicario who’d murdered one of his associates. He was, in Moore’s estimation, a bit too handsome for his own good, but his welcoming smile and tone suggested they’d become friends.
Seated beside him was Gloria Vega, a thirty-two-year-old CIA agent like Moore who would be embedded with the Mexican Federal Police. She was a broad-shouldered, no-nonsense Hispanic woman with black hair pulled tightly into a bun. According to a few of Moore’s colleagues, she was appreciated and feared because of her exacting nature and utter dedication to the job. She was a single woman and an only child whose parents had already died. The Agency was her life. Period. Her scrutinizing glance when Moore had entered was probably just the beginning of her interrogation of him. That the Federal Police were aiding and abetting the cartels in Mexico was old news; that an American CIA agent would be working alongside them would be as dangerous as it might be enlightening. The NCS had been working directly with Federal Police authorities to establish a relationship that would grant Vega full access while also protecting her identity. That sounded fine in theory; however, Ms. Vega was being dropped into a pit of rattlers, and Moore was glad he didn’t have her job.
The man seated across from her was David Whittaker, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). He had thinning gray hair combed straight back, a graying goatee, and wire-frame glasses. He wore a blue polo shirt with his agency’s patch on the breast and a badge hung loosely from a chain around his neck. He rose from his chair to hand Towers a USB key, which probably contained his own presentation. According to his file, Whittaker had been working for several years on the cartels’ gun-smuggling operations and had more recently helped organize ten-member teams based in seven border cities to address the problem. The cartels were recruiting “straw buyers” in the United States, who made purchases of firearms on their behalf and then paid people to bring the weapons across the border. In one of his reports, Whittaker noted that the Juárez Cartel had created an elaborate network based in (of all places) Minnesota to have weapons smuggled down into Mexico. Because law enforcement efforts had been doubled and redoubled in states such as California, Texas, and Arizona, the cartels had resorted to more extreme measures and remote locations to serve as hubs for transport. Whittaker’s contacts also led him to believe that military-grade weapons from Russia were being smuggled up through South America. Going after the cartels’ gun-smuggling operations was at least as difficult, dangerous, and frustrating as was trying to bring down their drug operations, and Whittaker’s report ended on an ominous note: He wasn’t sure the cartels could ever be stopped, only delayed, slowed, temporarily dismantled …
Moore caught the gaze of the man near the head of the table, Thomas Fitzpatrick, who, despite his surname, could easily pass for a Mexican sicario. His father was half Irish, half Guatemalan, and his mother was Mexican. He’d been born and raised in the United States and been recruited out of community college to join the DEA. Eighteen months ago he’d been sent into Mexico to penetrate the Juárez Cartel, but as happenstance would have it, he’d more easily penetrated and become a trusted member of the Sinaloas. He worked for a man named Luis Torres, who was Zúñiga’s right hand and head of his enforcer gang.
Fitzpatrick, whose sinewy arms were covered in tattoos depicting Catholic imagery and whose head was shaven, narrowed his gaze and spoke rapidly in Spanish: “What’s up, Moore? I hope your Spanish is good, because these guys will lay you out in a second if you don’t sound legit. And to be honest, my cover right now is more important than you, so you’d better brush up and forget about all those terrorist languages you’ve been speaking. You running with the big dogs now.”
Moore’s Spanish was excellent, although his knowledge of gang and cartel slang was admittedly lacking. He would, indeed, have to brush up on them. He answered in Spanish: “No worries, vato. I know what I need to do.”
Fitzpatrick, who went by the nickname Flexxx, reached across the table and made a fist, three of his fingers sporting thick gold rings. He banged fists with Moore, then settled back into his seat.
Gloria Vega glanced over at Moore and asked in Spanish, “Take a shower lately?”
“Yeah, but …yeah …I’m still jet-lagging.”
She rolled her eyes and faced the projector screen being lowered by Towers.
Moore squinted at the intelligence photograph of two young Hispanic males.
“I assume you’ve all seen this?” asked Towers.
“Yeah,” Moore began, hoping to demonstrate to the others that he wasn’t a total slacker. “The guy on the left is Dante Corrales. He’s the leader of the cartel’s enforcer gang. They call themselves The Gentlemen, if I recall. The guy on the right is Pablo Gutiérrez. He killed an FBI agent in Calexico. Mr. Ansara would like to get his hands on him.”
“You have no idea,” said Ansara, with a hiss of anger.
Towers nodded. “Our boy Corrales is a very clever young man, but he keeps hitting the Sinaloas head-on. We don’t think his superiors approve of this.”
“Why?” asked Moore.
Towers looked to Fitzpatrick, who cleared his throat and said, “Because of Escuadrón de la Muerte, the Guatemalan death squads. They’re back in action after a two-year hiatus. They’ve reorganized, and they’re killing members of Guatemala City’s meth labs and maritime exporting ops out of Puerto Barrios and Santo Tomás de Castilla in the Caribbean. They’ve also taken out cartel members at the Port of San José and Port of Champerico on the Pacific side.”
“And let me guess, they’re only hitting the other cartels. The Juárez Cartel has not been touched.”
“Exactly,” said Towers. “So if they want to terrorize the Sinaloas, why not use Los Buitres Justicieros? That’s what their most prolific hit team is calling themselves …the Avenging Vultures.”
“And we think at least a dozen of their members are now in Juárez,” said Fitzpatrick. “If you think the regular sicarios are hard-core, these guys are insane.”
“Sounds like a powder keg,” said Moore.
“Torres and Zúñiga know these guys are in town, and they’re concerned,” said Fitzpatrick. “There’s talk of hitting the Juárez guys again, but Zúñiga’s more concerned about securing a tunnel, and he’s unwilling to pay the Juárez Cartel for the rights to use one of theirs.”
“Why doesn’t he dig one of his own?” asked Vega.
Fitzpatrick snorted. “He’s tried. And every time Corrales and his boys come down and kill everyone. They have a lot more money than we do. They’ve got spotters everywhere. A huge network. Corrales has also paid off most of the engineers in town, so they’ll never work for Zúñiga. That little bastard has got the whole place locked up.”
Towers pointed at the photograph. “All right, our problem is this. Corrales is, at this moment, the highest-ranking member of the cartel we’ve identified, and in this case old-school conventional wisdom holds true: If we can identify and take out the leader, in most cases the cartel will fall. These are complex and sophisticated operations, and they’re not run by dummies. I’d daresay it takes a freaking genius to pull off some of the stuff they do. Whoever our guy is, he’s masked himself awfully well, and his organization has become the single most aggressive cartel in Mexico.”
“Persons of interest?” asked Moore.
“Not many,” said Towers. “We’ve investigated the m
ayor, chief of police, even the governor. You know less-educated guys like Zúñiga keep a higher profile, which satisfies their egos, but this guy is extremely well insulated.”
Towers brought up a color-coded flow chart representing the various facets of the Juárez Cartel’s operations. He continued, “The bottom line is this — we need to identify links the Juárez Cartel might have to terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to meth and coke labs in Colombia and Guatemala, and we need to positively link them to their gun-smuggling operations in the U.S. We also need to identify and attempt to expose the cartel’s contacts within the local and Federal Police forces. That’s phase one. Phase two is simple — we take ’em out.”
Ansara began to shake his head. “We have a lot of homework. And I hate homework.”
“Question,” Moore began. “Has Zúñiga ever been openly approached about helping to bring down the Juárez guys? Maybe he knows who’s running their operation.”
“Whoa, hold on there, dude,” Towers said, raising a palm. “You’re talking about the United States government entering into a partnership with a Mexican drug cartel.”
Moore beamed. “Absolutely.”
“Sounds like business as usual,” said Vega. “We get in bed with one devil to take out another.”
“Are you being sarcastic?” Moore asked her.
“You have a keen eye for the obvious. You’re right. It doesn’t thrill me.”
“Well, it’s not pretty, but it works.”
“I have to assume we wouldn’t get authorization to do that,” said Towers. “You’ll be able to recruit informants from both cartels, but I warn you those people don’t usually live very long.”
Moore nodded. “I’ve got a few ideas. And Fitzpatrick, I’ll need you to keep your ear to the ground. Any sign of Middle Eastern activity, Arabs, what have you, and I need to know about it.”