Against All Enemies mm-1

by Tom Clancy

  Once the voices of the guards grew faint, Ansara led the way through knots of pines and across the beds of needles crackling under their boots. It was 11:35 a.m.

  By the time they reached their bikes, they heard the truck lumbering slowly down the dirt road, a single narrow path that had been cleared by cartel workers and lying about twenty meters east of their location. Ansara mounted his bike and took off. He was an experienced bike handler, having trained extensively with his buddy Dave Ameno, who’d taught him to navigate some of Central Florida’s most technical trails. Ansara’s skills annoyed Moore, who could barely stay on his wheels as he leapt over roots and made small jumps. Ansara knew exactly when to come out of the saddle and throw his weight back, while Moore got thrown around on the bike like a rag doll whose wrists had been duct-taped to the handlebars.

  That Moore fell only twice before they reached their truck was sheer luck. That he hadn’t broken anything or drawn blood was the miracle they needed. They threw their bikes in the back of the pickup and took off, heading southwest down Sierra Drive, with Moore studying the map and the superimposed blue blip that represented the truck.

  “How far up are they?” Ansara asked.

  “Three-point-four-five miles.”

  The FBI agent nodded. “Remind me when this is all over to teach you how to ride a mountain bike. I can see that wasn’t part of your extensive training.”

  “Hey, I made it.”

  “Yeah, but you looked real tentative through those whoop-de-doos. I told you to relax and let the bike tell you where it wants to go.”

  “I don’t speak bike.”

  “Obviously.”

  “The bike wanted to go in the trees.”

  “You must become one with the machine, grasshopper.”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  Ansara laughed. “Hey, you got a girlfriend?”

  He grinned crookedly at the man. “You always talk this much?”

  “Hey, we’re following a truck.”

  “That’s right. So let’s stay on it. Signal’s still good. Any speculation on their first stop?”

  “Well, if they get onto 198, then I’m thinking Porterville. There’s been some trafficking through there before. DEA scored big a couple of years ago, I think.”

  Moore was about to broaden his view of the map when he turned to Ansara and said, “And to answer your question, I don’t have a girlfriend. I was with a very nice lady in Afghanistan, but I’m not sure when I’ll ever get back.”

  “A local?”

  “Oh, that would go over well, eh? They’d string me up by my you-know-whats, so no, she’s an American. She works for the U.S. Embassy.”

  “She hot?”

  Moore grinned. “No.”

  “Too bad.” Ansara’s cell phone rang. “Oh, this is a call I need to take.”

  “Who?”

  “Rueben. The kid I recruited. What do you have for me, young man?”

  Moore picked up only bits and pieces of the kid’s voice on the other end, but Ansara’s reaction filled in the blanks: The cartel had completed some kind of extensive tunnel running between Mexicali and Calexico. Rueben was one of about ten young men who were going to begin making major shipments through the tunnels, probably cocaine from Colombia and opium from Afghanistan. This was a brand-new avenue of approach for the cartel, and after the call, Ansara said that the mules had already made several dry runs. Now they felt certain the passageway was clean and undetected, thus the real product would begin moving north, while the money and weapons flowed south.

  The cartel truck moved at no more than forty-five miles per hour through the winding roads, and Ansara’s guess had been right. They’d driven directly into the small town of Porterville, California, population about fifty thousand, and headed straight for the Holiday Inn Express, where they parked in a space behind the three-story building.

  Moore and Ansara watched them from the parking lot of the Burger King across the street. All three men remained in the cab, nixing Moore’s plan to affix his GPS tracker to the underside of the vehicle. They dared not get any closer.

  “You want a cheeseburger?” asked Ansara.

  Moore looked at him in mock disgust. “Well, the In-N-Out Burger is the best burger on the West Coast, in my humble opinion, because it is one hundred percent pure beef. And their fries are cooked in one hundred percent pure cholesterol-free vegetable oil.”

  “Are you serious? You want a burger or not?”

  “Get me two.”

  And by the time Ansara returned with their food, another vehicle had pulled up beside the cartel truck. This second one was a white cargo van with tinted windows.

  Staring through the long lenses of his digital surveillance camera, Moore nearly choked on his cheeseburger as he watched the men transfer at least forty cinder-block-size bricks from the cartel truck to the van — in broad daylight.

  The driver of the van, another Hispanic man wearing a denim jacket and sunglasses, handed the cartel men a backpack, assumedly bulging with cash.

  “I can’t believe they’re this bold.”

  “Believe it,” answered Ansara. “Hi, there. Here are your drugs. Thanks for the money. Have a nice day.”

  The van left, and while the Agency would track it via satellite and Moore’s photographs of its tag number, intercepting it might result in a call back to the cartel guys in the truck, who would panic and not complete their distribution, so the van would be left alone. The truck pulled out of the parking lot and headed west, back out toward 65. Ansara kept well behind them, and by the time they merged onto the highway, heading south, the cartel truck had a two-mile lead.

  “So this girlfriend of yours,” Ansara said out of nowhere. “You still talking to her?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t have much luck with women.”

  “Because of this.”

  “The job? Hell, yeah …”

  “Well, I’m the wrong guy to ask for advice.”

  Ansara cracked a grin. “Maybe one day I’ll find a guy who knows how to do it. I’d forgotten you were a SEAL, so that pretty much dooms you.”

  “Hey, I knew some guys with families.”

  “They’re the exception, not the rule. Women nowadays want too much. I think some think we’re selfish for spending so much time away. When I was in the ’Stan, I didn’t know anyone on any of the ODA teams who wasn’t either single, divorced, or going through a divorce. It was kind of pathetic.”

  “I’d forgotten you were Special Forces. I thought you were just an ex — mountain biker looking for fame and fortune.”

  “Yeah, that’s why I joined the FBI — so I could work ridiculous hours and get underpaid while people try to kill me …”

  “You love it.”

  “Every minute.”

  Moore glanced down at the map. “Hey, bro. They stopped. Gas station. Near Delano.”

  “Could be just to refuel — but if it’s another exchange, we need to boogie, otherwise we could miss it.”

  Moore was about to zoom in on the image when the satellite feed froze up. “Shit. Lost the signal.”

  30 DEAR LADY

  Bonita Real Hotel

  Juárez, Mexico

  Gloria Vega was sitting in the unmarked sedan across the street from the hotel. Inspector Gómez was at the wheel. At Gómez’s request, they were dressed in civilian clothes but wearing their Kevlar vests. The desk clerk at the hotel, a man named Ignacio Hernández, had been found dead the night before, shot once, execution-style, in the forehead. The owner of the hotel, Mr. Dante Corrales, was nowhere to be found, and neither was his girlfriend. Gómez had contacted several other employees of the hotel, along with construction workers involved in a renovation project, and he and Vega were going to interview them today.

  “You see them up there,” said Gómez, referring to the two men sitting on the hotel’s roof. “They’re spotters, but not the usual ones. These men I haven’t seen before.”

  “M
aybe Corrales killed his desk clerk and took off,” said Vega.

  “Why would he do that?”

  She shrugged. “He was stealing.”

  “No. It’s a lot more complicated than that.”

  “How do you know?”

  He faced her and snapped. “Because I’ve been doing this for most of my life. Wait here until I come back for you.”

  With a little snort, the old man levered himself out of the car, slammed the door shut, and ventured across the street, toward the hotel’s main entrance. Vega watched as the spotters marked his every move.

  When would the hammer fall? Everything had to be carefully timed and planned, Towers kept telling her. In point of fact, she was running out of time, and being careful was a hell of a lot harder now. Could she survive another attempt on her life? Was any of this even worth it anymore?

  She looked to the hotel.

  The spotters were focused on something else.

  She heard the engine first. Then a dark blue sedan came barreling around the corner with two men hanging out the passenger-side windows. They wore T-shirts, jeans, and balaclavas over their faces.

  Vega bolted out of the car as their shotguns swung around, toward her. She was already returning fire as they opened up on her, their guns booming, buckshot ripping into the car.

  But their shots were accompanied by two more, and her gaze flicked up to the rooftop of the hotel, where both the spotters were now holding rifles and firing at her.

  A breath later, a needling pain woke in her neck, and two more needles pierced her shoulders as blood began pumping onto the pavement. Her hand went reflexively for her neck, which was now bathed in blood. She shuddered, wanted to scream, opened her mouth, but her vocal cords no longer worked. She collapsed behind the car as the other vehicle screeched to a halt, and Vega barely turned her head in that direction as one of the men approached her, lifted his shotgun, and fired point-blank into her face, which was already going numb.

  It might’ve been a minute or two, or just a few seconds, she wasn’t sure, but she looked up with one good eye and through a haze of blood and saw Gómez leaning over her.

  She should be dead already. She knew that. But her body was as stubborn as her spirit.

  “I’m sorry, dear lady,” said Gómez. “I’m so sorry …” He reached into her pocket and fished out her cell phone. “I’ve been doing this for too long to let myself get caught. You know that. And I know they sent you to find a rat. It’s a terrible business. Terrible, terrible, terrible.”

  He rose and turned back to another man. “Pablo? What are you doing here? Where’s Dante?”

  “He’s safe. We had some trouble with the Guatemalans.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Dante sent me with a message: Leave Zúñiga alone. Don’t touch him.”

  “Zúñiga? Are you crazy? He’s the one we need to kill.”

  Vega tried to listen, wished she could contact Towers, and then her thoughts broke off from their constricted orbit and floated away to her dead parents. She wanted to see them, to see the light, but for the time being there was only a numbing darkness.

  And from that void came a final exchange of voices.

  “Dante is making a horrible mistake. Tell him I want to speak to him before he does anything.”

  “I will, señor. I will.”

  And now the cold set in, pushing back the numbness. She shivered violently. There it was now, a pinprick at first and then a glorious beam of light as hot and warm as the summer sun. This was not God, some argued, only a reaction of the brain. But Vega knew better. She knew …

  Chevron Gas Station

  Delano, California

  Despite losing the satellite signal, Moore and Ansara went to the truck’s last known location at the gas station, and by the time they arrived, Moore had reacquired the satellite and confirmed that the truck had not moved. Sometimes they picked up a little luck in their travels, most times not.

  A surprise phone call from ATF Agent Whittaker as they were nearing the station left Moore’s breath shallow.

  “You’re looking for a silver Honda Odyssey van,” the man said. “Should be reaching your location pretty soon. They’ll pull out back behind the car wash, I think. Towers says we let ’em make the exchange.”

  “Roger that,” said Moore. “And you’re sure those are the same weapons that SEAL smuggled out of the ’Stan?”

  “Oh, I’m positive.”

  “Jesus …”

  “Yeah, well, he’ll be going down — because that’s only part of the shipment on that van. The rest of it is still up in Minnesota, and that’s the evidence I’ll be collecting. Glad they weren’t stupid enough to try to smuggle it all in one shipment. Their attempt to be smart works in my favor. We should have him and the weapons in custody by tonight.”

  “Well, thanks for the heads-up,” said Moore, as Ansara pulled into the parking lot of a transmission shop next door to the station. They had a clear, unobstructed view of the truck, which had, in fact, parked out back behind the car wash.

  Moore called up one of Whittaker’s reports on his smartphone and scanned the inventory list of items purportedly stolen and smuggled by that Navy SEAL:

  14 M4A1 rifles with SOPMOD accessory kits

  11 M14 sniper rifles (7.62mm)

  9 MK11 Mod 0 sniper weapon systems

  2 HK MP5 submachine guns

  6 Benelli M4 Super 90 shotguns

  14 M203 grenade launchers

  Moore gave Ansara a description of the Honda, and the words had barely left his mouth when the van pulled into the station, its rear end sagging slightly from the weight of its cargo.

  “You know, at least in Afghanistan the bad guys tried to act like bad guys,” Moore said. “They smuggled opium and weapons at night. They used the caves. They tried to remain out of sight …but these guys …damn …”

  Ansara nodded and lifted his camera. “Act like you’re doing nothing wrong and no one will think you’re doing anything wrong. The thing is, they know we’re looking for them at night. They know we’ll raid their houses in the early morning, when everyone is supposed to be sleeping, so a lot of them do business in the early morning, sleep all afternoon, then stay up all night.”

  Moore nodded. “You’ve seen that inventory list, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you know we can’t let those weapons get into Mexico.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hang on there, cowboy. The money trail’s more important than the guns — you know that.”

  “I know, but I just can’t bear the thought of a gun that once belonged to a SEAL being in the hands of some cartel scumbag.”

  “Maybe they’re all new guns,” said Ansara.

  Moore snorted and began taking pictures himself as a collection of black Anvil cases was hauled from the van and into the back of the truck. The cartel truck’s driver handed a brown-paper shopping bag to the van’s driver, a tall, wiry guy with wispy black hair extending down to his shoulders. He looked more Native American than Mexican.

  The exchange took no more than five minutes, with the men performing their loading operations smoothly, even routinely. The van drove off. The cartel guys climbed into the cab but waited a few moments. Moore zoomed in with his camera. The driver was on the phone.

  Moore’s own phone vibrated. Towers. Just three words to make Moore’s heart sink: “Vega is dead.”

  “How?”

  Towers explained. Then added, “I just got word. After they shot her, they rigged her body with C-4. When EMS and the local police arrived, they detonated the charges. You believe that?”

  “Who rigged her? Gómez or the cartel?”

  “Not sure. We had a feed on the area but lost the signal when we switched from one satellite to another.”

  Moore spoke through clenched teeth: “I’ll bet it was that fucker Gómez. He had her killed, and he set it up to look like the cartel.”

  “She was our best link to him. I’ve got a few
spotters of our own out there, and some pretty good civilian informants, but this is still a major setback.”

  Moore closed his eyes. “She didn’t die for nothing. We’ll make sure of that.”

  After he got off the phone with Towers, he and Ansara sat in silence, watching as the cartel truck left the station and got back on the road. They fell in behind them, allowed several cars to get in front, and continued on with a good satellite signal. A message from Langley indicated that they’d identified the cartel truck driver’s cell phone and had hacked into its operating system to turn on its GPS signal — so now they were tracking the truck via visual images from a satellite and by using the GPS signal emitted by the driver’s cell phone. According to the message, signal interruption should not happen again. Moore wasn’t buying that and was looking for any chance he could get to plant a good old-fashioned beacon on the truck, which they could track locally.

  “And five are now three,” Moore said, breaking the silence in the cab.

  “Yeah,” answered Ansara. “I’ve only lost two close buddies over the years. Even after all my time overseas. Only two. Both FBI agents. All my close buddies in the Army made it through — at least so far. How about you?”

  “We don’t want to go there.”

  “That many, huh?”

  “It’s not a numbers game.”

  “I know you were there with Fitzpatrick. And I agree. He was an ace. I hope you’re not blaming yourself.”

  Moore sighed. “You think about how you could’ve set it up differently and how your buddy might still be alive. I sent him into the house to clear it. He got ambushed and died. I can let myself off the hook, or I can take responsibility for the orders I gave him.”

  “Dude, if you go through life like that, you’ll be miserable.”

  “Yup. I know …”

  For a few seconds Moore closed his eyes and sat down at a table with Frank Carmichael at the head. Beside him were Rana, Colonel Khodai, and Fitzpatrick. Vega sauntered into the restaurant, which turned out to be the Italian place where they’d had Carmichael’s wake. The feisty woman tsked at them, as if to say they were fools for allowing themselves to be killed. Then she faced Moore. “You know what to do.”