by Tom Clancy
Rojas raked his fingers through his hair, then finally looked up from one of his screens.
“What can I do for you, Fernando?”
“Sorry to bother you, señor, but I wanted to discuss this in person. Dante’s body has still not been found, and the murder at the hotel failed to draw him out. And if you recall, Pablo is also missing, and so is Dante’s girlfriend, María.”
“Yes, I know, I know — what are you worried about? And why are you bothering me with these trivial details? I pay you very well to handle these things. Find him. He knows he failed to protect my son. He knows the consequences.”
“Yes, señor, but this is important, and you should know. We’ve had trouble at the new tunnel. Another shipment has been stolen.”
Rojas drew back his head and frowned. “We lost another one? Are you kidding me?”
“We lost everything. The mules, the police cars, the entire shipment.”
“Slow down. Police cars? What are you talking about?”
“Our spotters tell me it looked like a raid on the house by Calexico police, but no one ever saw the police vans arrive at the station. They disappeared while en route.”
“That’s ridiculous. They switched cars. Who was in charge of following them? I want him killed.”
Castillo sighed. “It gets worse. Pedro Romero, our chief engineer on the project? His family was killed, and we found him dead inside the house, along with another mule in the tunnel. The weapons shipment from Minnesota arrived there, and it was that team that found them. They’re getting the weapons through the tunnel right now, but the power was cut.”
Rojas rubbed the corners of his eyes, cursed under his breath, then asked, “What do you think?”
Castillo closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “When you got back from Colombia, you told me about your meeting with Samad and what he wanted.”
“No, that’s not possible,” Rojas said quickly. “I warned them, and they’d be fools to test us. Either Dante or Zúñiga stole from us.”
“Señor, it’s very possible that this Samad used our tunnel to get into the United States.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Castillo grew more emphatic. “When the police carried out the backpacks, the spotters counted six extra bags. The spotters are sure they were not the usual packs — and I’m sure those packs weren’t stored in the house by anyone else. They had to come through the tunnel.”
“I’ll call Samad right now.”
“If it’s him, he won’t answer.”
“Then Rahmani must answer for this.”
“And if he denies everything?”
Rojas bolted up from his chair, his voice lifting: “Then everything we’ve built together is in danger.”
Castillo recoiled as a chill struck him.
Rojas winced. “Fernando, I’m sorry for shouting. It’s just …you know I’ve thought of putting an end to all this. Walking away from it all — and if what you’re saying is true …”
“I understand, señor. I would still call Rahmani to let him know that he must pay if Samad has entered the United States. Any threat to the cartel must be neutralized.”
Rojas stood there, his gaze going distant, as though he were imagining mushroom clouds rising over every major American city. “Our Calexico informants are well paid. Lean on them hard. Find the drivers of those police cars. I want to be certain before we act. Am I clear?”
“As always, señor.”
Castillo left the office. He’d planned to share with Rojas one other bit of news, but the man already had enough on his mind. Miguel was doing some probing around the house and on the Internet, and of course this wasn’t the first time that he’d tried to spy on his father. Occasionally a news report would come out that attempted to link Señor Rojas to investment fraud or real estate scams or even vote tampering during several elections, and while Miguel would always openly stand behind his father, Castillo knew that the young man still had his doubts. The recent attempt on his father’s life had probably rekindled his curiosity. Castillo would have a long talk with Miguel to once more allay his suspicions. On this point, Señor Rojas had been adamant.
He must never learn about the cartel.
Border Tunnel House
Calexico, California
Moore’s senses were already reaching into the house as he opened the back door as silently as he could and stepped into a small washroom. Beyond it was a narrow hall with two bedroom doors and a third door farther up. Ansara moved ahead, pistol drawn, and turned left down another hall, toward where the garage door should be. Meanwhile, Moore searched the first two bedrooms for the tunnel entrance. Just some cheap put-together Walmart furniture and old mattresses standing atop stained carpeting. Ansara met him back in the hallway to say, “They’ve only moved half the cases so far. They’ll be coming back for the rest.”
He’d barely finished when the sound of footfalls came from the master bedroom.
They ducked back into one of the smaller rooms and stood there, behind the door, not daring to breathe, as the men shifted across the hallway and back out toward the garage door.
Moore was back in a zone of calm, standing there behind the door, just looking at Ansara, who’d given up on holding his own breath. The man’s chest rose and fell, his breath coming louder. Moore raised a palm, as if to say, Take it easy.
Ansara nodded quickly.
The men lumbered back from the garage with the rest of the cases and crossed into the bedroom. The sound of shuffling feet and metal buckling tightened Moore’s frown.
He held up a finger. Wait …wait … He lifted his smartphone and sent off a text to Towers: In house, about to enter the tunnel. Weapons moving through. Stand by …
A sharp nod to Ansara said it was time to go. They shifted gingerly out of the bedroom and crossed into the master, where, near the closet door, they found a man lying on his back, his shirt soaked in blood. Ansara leaned over him, then drew back his head and whispered, “I know this guy. I mean, I know who he is. Pedro Romero. He was the engineer on this project. He had contact with my mule.” Ansara’s expression grew darker. “Dude, we got some wild-card shit happening here. Sinaloas …who knows …”
Why they’d killed the engineer remained to be seen. While Ansara took pictures of the dead man and messaged them back to Towers, Moore inspected the tunnel entrance set into the closet. They would gain access via an aluminum ladder someone had picked up at the local Home Depot for $89.99 plus tax (the sticker was still affixed to the top).
Ansara motioned that he’d go first. The ladder protested, and Moore winced. He reached the bottom some eight feet below. Moore followed, and together they started down the shaft. Despite the rather crude entry, the shaft itself was an engineering marvel. Using penlights they’d drawn from their breast pockets and keeping their pistols at the ready, they picked up the pace. Moore rapped a knuckle on one of the acoustic panels and grew further impressed. They had strung up LED lights, which were now dark, had hung ventilation and electrical pipes, and what could be a drainage pipe ran along the floor, which was still dirt but swept and leveled with great precision. The tunnel was, Moore speculated, one of the most complex and audacious smuggling operations that had ever been constructed by any cartel.
Flickering light came from ahead, and for a few seconds Ansara froze, believing the light was headed toward them, but they resumed their pace and shifted left to find what Moore interpreted as a makeshift chapel built within a shallow side tunnel that terminated in a wall of wooden trusses bound together by aluminum straps. The candles and crucifixes and photographs stole his attention away from the floor, where Ansara was first to spot the body.
“It’s the kid,” he gasped, just as Moore noted a pair of furrows in the dirt caused by the kid’s heels as he’d been dragged from behind.
Ansara dropped to his knees and directed his light at the boy’s eyes. Damn, the mule was young. Stabbed. His life snuffed out in an instant.
Su
ddenly, Ansara put his ear to the boy’s mouth. “Shit, he’s still breathing!”
“Yeah, but buddy, we can’t stay,” Moore insisted. “They could be gone already. And all we got is one guy’s cell to track. He turns off that phone, and we’re screwed.”
Ansara nodded, then faced Rueben. “I know, I know, but look, he’s trying to say something. Who did this to you, Rueben? Who did this?”
Moore slid up beside Ansara and watched as the kid, his eyes narrowed to slits, moved his mouth, but he couldn’t muster the words.
“Hang in there, kid,” said Moore. “We’ll come back for you, I promise.”
The kid reached up and grabbed Moore’s wrist.
“Just relax, don’t strain yourself,” said Ansara. “You don’t worry.”
Moore pulled free and started off. A look back told him Ansara was right there, though his eyes were glassy, his breathing even more labored. Ansara wore the guilt on his face, and Moore knew exactly how he felt.
Rueben was screaming in his mind, but he lacked the strength to convert those thoughts to sounds that the FBI agent could understand: They blackmailed Pedro. Arabs came through the tunnel! Terrorists! And they stabbed me! They stabbed me! Now they’re in the United States. They made it. Don’t leave me here. I’m going to die.
The thoughts were too quick, too disorganized, too erratic, for him to dwell on any longer. He heard Ansara telling his mother that he’d been killed.
“I’m so sorry about your son.”
His death would be enough of a shock, but add to that his involvement with a drug cartel and the FBI? He wasn’t sure his mother could survive that news.
And that was all he could think about now, not even realizing that he was no longer breathing and that the candlelight had gone dark.
The man had not identified himself on the phone, but José understood what was happening, and the sudden arrival of four more cars and at least a dozen more sicarios told him that whoever this guy was, he had his connections and that José had best listen to his orders.
“But remember,” José told him. “I am El Jefe. Corrales is gone now.”
“Yeah, okay, kid, fine. Now you do exactly as I ask. You’re inside the trailer, right? Do you see the safe under the desk?”
“Yeah, I see it.”
“Get down in there. Hit the power button. Type in 43678009, then hit the pound key. Got it?”
Jose did as he was told, screwed up the number, had to ask for it again, then finally got it right and heard a click. The safe opened, and he gasped as the light of his phone revealed its contents. The top shelf was crammed with bound stacks of U.S. dollars in denominations of twenties and fifties. He began stuffing them into the pockets of his leather trench coat, the one he’d bought after seeing how cool Corrales looked in his.
“Are you done stealing the cash yet?”
José shuddered. “I haven’t touched the money.”
“Okay, I believe you,” said the man with a snort. “See the walkie-talkie in there?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not a walkie-talkie. Once the weapons team gets the guns through, you send them back into the tunnel, then you blow it while they’re still inside. Just power on and jam down the big red button. Can you do this for me, José? Are you fucking smart enough? Because if you are, you can keep all the money.”
“I’ll get it done. But who are you?”
“I’m Fernando. I am your boss. I work for Los Caballeros. And you are a gentleman just like me. That’s all.”
A wooden staircase constructed of two-by-fours and plywood lay at the far end of the tunnel, where the sound-dampening panels broke off and the ground rose about two feet. Dim light flickered from above, from either flashlights or something else. Moore thought he heard voices, faint but there, and the sound of a metal door clinking steadily as it was rolled open.
Holding his breath once more, and with Ansara still at his back, he slowly ascended the stairs, peered up past the ledge that was in effect the floor, and realized the entrance had been set within some kind of maintenance/electrical/plumbing room lined with pumps and lockers and other construction and custodial equipment. The door ahead was open, allowing him to gaze farther out into a large warehouse with at least a twenty-foot ceiling. Pallets of construction materials — cinder blocks, bags of concrete, stacks of rebar — were lined up in long rows to the right and left, but dead ahead stood a group of men and the Anvil cases containing the weapons, which were being loaded into the back of a Ford Explorer.
Moore turned back down to Ansara, widened his gaze, and motioned for him to hold.
And when Moore turned back, lifting his head just a little higher to get a better view, a thug with a goatee and sideburns that formed a chinstrap suddenly turned into the room—
“Hey, what the fuck?” he shouted, gaping at Moore. “Who are you?”
“We’re with those guys,” Moore answered quickly.
“Bullshit!” The guy spun back toward the others. “José!”
Just then Moore’s phone began to vibrate, and Ansara shouted, “Towers called. They’ve got a big group outside!”
Moore put two rounds in the screamer’s back, then faced Ansara. “Run!”
José broke away from the group as his man Tito collapsed onto his belly. Beyond him was the tunnel entrance, and he couldn’t see who’d shot his man but guessed it was someone who’d come up from the tunnel.
Breaking into a sprint, he hollered back to the three men who’d delivered the weapons, then burst into the maintenance room, searching the areas behind the pumps until he reached the tunnel entrance and the others arrived breathlessly behind him.
José gestured with his pistol. “Get down in there. Clear it out. I want the fucker who did this.”
All three were armed with their mata policías and hustled down the stairs.
His heart racing, José ran back to the others and screamed for them to hurry loading the weapons and that he’d join them in a minute.
Catch your breath, he ordered himself, as he shifted away from the SUV and turned his back on the group. He pulled the detonator from his pocket and switched on the power. The green light cast a glow across his face, and for a few seconds he just stared at it, hypnotized by the light.
And then, imagining that the weapons team was now about a thousand feet into the shaft, he began to chuckle, heady with the power in his hands.
Rojas Mansion
Cuernavaca, Mexico
56 Miles South of Mexico City
Sonia waited at the door while Miguel entered the office and cleared his throat. His father glanced up from the desk and said, “Miguel, I’m sorry, I’m working late tonight and I’m extremely busy right now. Is there something wrong?”
“I want to see the vaults in the basement,” he blurted out.
“What?”
“Take me to the basement right now. Show me what you have in the vaults down there.”
His father finally glanced up from his computer screens and frowned. “Why?”
Miguel could not bear to utter the truth. “I just …I’ve never been down there. I thought I’d show Sonia. But you have a guard there — all the time.”
“Fine, then. Let’s go now.”
“Are you serious? You always say no. How many times have I asked you? At least twenty times over the years?”
“Okay, so now I’ll show you.” He bolted from his chair and stormed past Miguel, wrenched open the door, and startled Sonia, who was texting her father on her smartphone.
“Did you want the tour as well?” his father snapped.
“I’m sorry, señor. We didn’t mean to disturb you.”
His father raised a palm and stormed down the hall.
Miguel gave Sonia a worried glance, then hustled after the man.
They reached the twin doors leading to the broad staircase, and his father ordered the guard to unlock the doors and allow them to pass. “Turn off the alarms as well,” he said.
He tossed a glance back at Miguel. “I know what this is about. And I’m disappointed.”
Miguel bit his lip and averted his gaze. His father stomped past the door held open by the guard, and Miguel and Sonia got on his heels.
The staircase was heavily carpeted in a deep burgundy and turned onto two separate landings before reaching the bottom. Lights set into the ceiling controlled via motion sensors automatically clicked on as they shifted ahead across an ornately tiled floor. Behind them was a garage that again Miguel had never seen. There were at least ten antique automobiles and a lift to carry them up to a ramp leading outside. Miguel thought it amusing and not surprising that the basement of their house was as well decorated as the rest of the mansion.
Two vaults like the ones you’d find in neighborhood banks stood side by side on the far end. Both doors were shut. His father approached a control panel to the right side of one vault. He typed in a code, rested his hand on a dark piece of glass. A light shone in his eye; then he moved his hand to another device, where he inserted his index finger. A computer voice said, “Sampling.” He withdrew the finger, now spotted with blood, and licked it.
The vault door thumped several times, then hissed open, as though propelled by air.
“Go on in. Have a look, while I open the other one,” his father said.
Miguel motioned to Sonia, and they shifted past the giant door and into the vault, which stretched back at least twenty meters and was equally wide. Hundreds of pieces of art stood in rows on the floor or on easels, while in the far corner were at least twenty, perhaps even thirty, pieces of handmade furniture, desks and chests of drawers and armoires Miguel remembered seeing his father purchase but had forgotten about. More guns like the ones he collected in the vacation house were sitting on two long tables, with others tucked tightly in their cases stacked on the floor beside them. From a series of long poles to their immediate left hung twenty or more exotic rugs his father had no doubt purchased in Asia, the documentation for each still pinned in the corners. Still another series of humidity-controlled glass cases held collections of his father’s rarest pre-1900 literature, first editions that Miguel knew were worth a fortune. Sonia gazed in wonder at the items while Miguel turned back to the door, where his father had appeared.