by Tom Clancy
Dante Corrales was seated on one sofa, wearing a black silk shirt, his arm bound in a sling. His eyes were bloodshot, and he had trouble getting to his feet as Moore approached.
Zúñiga loitered behind the sofa, a beer in hand. He sighed deeply and said, “Señor Howard, I’ve just had a big dinner, and I’m already beginning to fall asleep. So let’s get down to business.”
“Who is this guy?” asked Corrales.
“He is a business associate,” Zúñiga snapped.
Corrales’s frown grew more sharp. “No, no, no. I told you why I’m here and what we’re going to do together — just the two of us, no one else.”
“Dante, if you’re as valuable as you say, then I’m selling you to him.” Zúñiga began to chuckle.
“Selling me? What the hell?”
Moore held up a palm. “Relax. We’re all here to help each other.”
Moore’s smartphone began to vibrate. He winced and decided to ignore the call.
And then, before anyone else could speak, gunfire boomed from somewhere outside, drawing their gazes toward the bay windows along the front of the house.
Dollar Tree
Sherman Way
North Hollywood, California
Samad, Talwar, and Niazi each had a basket in hand as they strolled through the aisles of the store, trying to keep their reactions in check. The other shoppers at the Dollar Tree paid little attention to them. They were dressed like Mexican migrant workers, in jeans, flannel shirts, and ball caps. They spoke Spanish to one another, and repeatedly Talwar shouldered up to Samad and expressed his disbelief over the prices: “One dollar? For everything? Just one dollar?”
He held up a container of jalapeño cheese spread, along with a bag of Burger King Onion Rings.
Niazi snorted, then eyed him emphatically. “One dollar.” He gestured with his bag of beef jerky, which included “50 % Free” and said, “See? One dollar. And more free.”
Talwar lingered there in the aisle, his eyes welling with tears. “Everything in America is amazing. Everyone has so much. You can buy this stuff cheap. They don’t know what it’s like for us. Even water is a luxury. They have no idea. Why have they been given these gifts and we have not?”
Samad squinted through a deep breath. He’d known his men would react this way, because they had never been out of their country. What they’d seen of Mexico was not unlike the slums of the Middle East. But this part of America was radically different. During the drive through Los Angeles, they had cruised up Rodeo Drive, with its designer shops — Chanel, Christian Dior, Gucci, Jimmy Choo, and Valentino, among the dozens of others — and they had witnessed a culture of covetousness that for his men must have been mind-boggling. They’d stared openmouthed at the mansions — palaces, really — and Samad had appreciated the irony of how those with money resided in the highlands while those less fortunate lived below in the valley. The cars, the clothes, the fast food, and the advertising were extremely attractive to them, while he found it all utterly repellent — because he’d seen it all before in Dubai during his college days and understood that beneath the veneer of wealth were people who were, more often than not, morally bankrupt.
Wealth was not something that good Muslims should love, but rather they should love Allah and manage their wealth according to the injunctions of Allah and use their wealth as a means to worship Him.
Samad hardened his voice. “Talwar, do not put your worth in material things. This is not what Allah would have for us. We are here for a purpose. We are the instruments of Allah’s will. All of this is only a distraction.”
After a moment to consider that, Talwar nodded. “I can’t help but envy them. To be born into this …to be born and not have to struggle your entire life.”
“This is what’s made them weak, what’s killed their god and poisoned their hearts and minds — and stomachs, for that matter. But for now, if you want to sample their junk food and drink their soda, then go ahead. Why not? It will not corrupt our souls. But you will not lose sight of our mission, and you will not envy these people. Their souls are black.”
His men nodded and continued down the aisles. Samad poised before some bags of plastic action figures, forty-eight-count, with brown, green, and black soldiers in various poses. He marveled over how the Americans portrayed their forces to their children, immortalizing them in plastic. One soldier held a rocket launcher on his shoulder, and Samad could only snicker over the irony. He decided to buy them. One dollar.
When their baskets were full of junk food and toiletries and whatever else struck their fancy, they got into their Hyundai Accent and drove back toward Studio City, where they had been put up in a second-story apartment on Laurel Canyon Boulevard. Rahmani’s team here in Los Angeles — four men who’d been in the United States for the past five years — had welcomed them with open arms. They had laughed and eaten and discussed the group’s escape from Mexico during that first night in the city. It was Rahmani’s American friend, Gallagher, the one he had recruited from the CIA, who had orchestrated the pickup in Calexico and had arranged for the vehicles to be painted, the escape team to be dressed like local police. It was a sophisticated maneuver that had afforded them secure passage to the Calexico airport. From there, they said their good-byes to the rest of the group. And it was then that Samad had begun to inform his lieutenants about the larger plan, growing more comfortable in the fact that at this point, they might not be captured and questioned. Rahmani had been adamant about telling the teams only at the very last minute exactly what was happening — in case any of them were captured. They’d be instructed not to be taken alive …
There were supposed to be eighteen of them in all, six teams of three men each. But that fool Ahmad Leghari had not made it beyond Paris, leaving them with one team of only two members. Leghari would be replaced as soon as that pair reached their destination city of San Antonio.
Six teams. Six missile launchers.
“What are the targets?” Talwar had kept asking, since he was the one who had received extensive training in the operation and firing of MPADs (Man-Portable Air Defense Systems). He’d been taken under the Pakistani Army’s wing, along with five other men, and ushered out to the semidesert region near Muzaffargarh, where he’d spent two weeks firing practice missiles at fixed targets. Rahmani had paid the Army handsomely for that instruction.
“So are we going to shoot federal buildings? Schools?” Talwar added.
As they had climbed into their single-prop Cessna, about to fly up to Palm Springs with a pilot who was, of course, working for Rahmani, Samad had grinned and said, “Oh, Talwar, our plan is a little more ambitious than that.”
Now as they continued back toward the apartment in Studio City, Samad went over the details in his head. He’d memorized the timetable, and his pulse became erratic the more he thought about the days to come …
Zúñiga Ranch House
Juárez, Mexico
Moore rushed to the front window and drew back the blinds. Zúñiga had powerful, motion-activated floodlights mounted outside the house, and in all that glare that pushed back the twilight came two white pickup trucks barreling toward the front gates. The trucks were painted with the livery and logos of the Juárez police, but the pairs of men seated in each of the flatbeds were dressed in plainclothes, and one guy in each truck held a weapon that caused Moore to gasp: an M249 light machine gun capable of belching out 750 to 1,000 rounds per minute. Those M249s, still referred to by many as Squad Automatic Weapons, were reserved for military operations. How these “cops” had acquired such weapons was a question Moore summarily dismissed, because they were directing fire on two more black trucks giving chase, and those vehicles belonged to the Mexican Federal Police. Why the hell would the local cops be firing on the Feds?
The answer came in the next few seconds.
Moore would bet his life on the fact that those local cops weren’t cops at all, and as they crashed through the gates, he felt even more certain.
They all had shaved heads and arms crawling with tattoos. They’d either stolen the vehicles or been given them by corrupt officers.
Zúñiga’s security detail, about six guys who were positioned along the perimeter of the gate, with two guys up on the roof, opened fire on all the trucks, and the popping and booming of all those weapons sent Moore’s pulse racing.
Corrales arrived at Moore’s side and cried, “The Feds are trying to protect me!”
“Why would they do that?” Moore asked sarcastically. “Because your buddy Inspector Gómez sent them?”
“What the fuck? How do you know him?”
Moore grabbed Corrales by the neck. “If you come with me, I’ll offer you full immunity. No jail time. Nothing. You want to bring down the Juárez Cartel? So do I.”
Corrales was a young man who — when faced with certain death — did not quibble over details. “Okay, whatever. Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
The truck came bouncing forward toward the bay windows, its driver showing no intention of stopping. Even as Moore and Corrales bolted away, the truck plowed through the front of the house, cinder blocks and drywall and glass exploding inward as the pickup’s engine roared and the guys on the flatbed screamed and ducked away from the falling debris.
A couple of Zúñiga’s guys who’d been inside and in another part of the house rushed toward the truck, which was now idling in the living room. Zúñiga’s fresh troops traded fire with the guys in the flatbed. Moore hazarded a look back as the driver of the truck opened his door and thrust out an AK-47. He fired haphazardly but managed to hit one of Zúñiga’s men in the shoulder.
Moore and Corrales continued on toward Zúñiga himself, who was already in the kitchen and seizing a Beretta from the countertop.
Outside and visible through the gaping hole in the wall, the second police truck cut left, heading around the side of the house, toward the garage, with the two Federal Police trucks following. “If they cut off the doors back there, we won’t get out!” shouted Moore, his phone once more vibrating. That’d be Towers calling to warn him about the attack, a warning he was pretty sure he no longer needed.
Zúñiga’s men in the living room — one okay, the other shot but still clutching a rifle — began firing at the pickup’s driver, who was returning fire, along with the guys on the flatbed, the walls bursting apart under the fire.
And the second that machine-gunner opened up, rounds chewing into the fieldstone fireplace, Moore, Corrales, and Zúñiga burst down a hallway, heading toward the back of the house. Moore cursed. You didn’t need any more motivation than that.
Between the gunfire thundering in the living room and the shots booming outside, Moore had a flashback to Forward Operating Base Pharaoh in Afghanistan, where the gods of thunder and lightning had warred with each other all night. The news media had been calling Juárez a war zone for years, but Moore hadn’t fully appreciated that label until now.
“Give me a fucking gun!” screamed Corrales. “I want a fucking piece right now!”
Zúñiga ignored him, and they raced into the master bedroom, replete with a four-poster bed the size of a swimming pool. Here the walls were adorned with the framed silhouettes of nude women and fantastic art deco pieces depicting South American landscapes that must have cost Zúñiga a fortune. Moore had the better part of two seconds to appreciate those pieces before he spotted another pistol, this one the requisite Belgian-made police blaster, sitting atop a chest of drawers. He grabbed it, flicked off the safety, and spun back toward the sound of heavy footfalls in the hallway. One of the guys from the pickup had escaped from Zúñiga’s men and was running straight toward them, both arms raised, pistols in his fists.
Moore got off two shots, hitting the guy in the left breast and groin before rolling out of incoming fire, which must’ve gone high and thumped into the bedroom ceiling, as dust trickled down into his eyes.
“Holy shit,” cried Corrales, staring wide-eyed over Moore’s marksmanship.
“Go!” Moore ordered him.
Zúñiga was waving them on into the master bath, where a closet to his left opened into a massive wardrobe at least thirty feet wide, with a dressing table in the center. He shoved a key in the lock of a pair of tall wooden cabinet doors, swung them open, and grabbed a rifle, which he shoved into Corrales’s hands. Then he fetched another and thrust it toward Moore, who cursed in surprise.
“Where the hell did you get these?” Moore cried.
“eBay, gringo. Now come on!”
Moore could only shake his head in astonishment as he adjusted his grip on the Colt M16A2 with thirty-round magazine, standard U.S. Marine Corps issue and simply a larger, heavier version of the M4A1 carbines he’d used as a SEAL operator.
What was Zúñiga going to show them next? An M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tank parked in a secret subterranean garage?
Moore thumbed the rifle’s selector lever, which included the safety and the semiautomatic options as well as a three-round burst option that saved you ammo. He chose semiautomatic, then leaned over toward Corrales. “Here, dumbass, the safety’s here.” He threw the lever and flashed a sarcastic thumbs-up.
The kid returned a middle finger.
And in that second, Moore swung his rifle up, past Corrales’s face, and shot the heavyset guy who’d just appeared in the doorway, holding his pistol with both hands.
Corrales screamed, cursed, then swung around and watched as the guy collapsed in a bloody heap.
“What the fuck?” Corrales said with a gasp. He raced over to the guy and hunkered down, examining a tattoo on the guy’s biceps: the circular image of an Aztec warrior with his pierced tongue extended. “They’re not Fernando’s regular guys,” said Corrales. “He’s Azteca. From the prison. An assassination squad.”
“Hired by your old boss?” asked Moore.
“No time!” cried Zúñiga. “Come on!”
Corrales rose and started toward Moore. “We’re fucking dead, dude. We are dead.”
“I don’t think so.”
They followed Zúñiga toward the other side of the closet, where he fumbled nervously with a key and finally opened another door. He reached in and threw a light switch.
“Where to now?” asked Corrales.
“Up,” answered Zúñiga.
“Up? Are you kidding me? What the fuck, old man! How’re we getting out!”
“Shut up!” Zúñiga faced Moore. “Now, Señor Howard? Lock the door behind us!”
Moore did so.
Zúñiga led them down a narrow hall, with their shoulders brushing the walls as they reached a metal staircase with about a dozen steps up to another door. Moore understood now. They were going to the flat roof above the garage and could find cover behind the surrounding parapet and drainage lines. Clever bastard. Zúñiga must know his Sun Tzu’s Art of War: “Never launch an upward attack on the enemy who occupies high ground; nor meet the enemy head-on when there are hills backing him; nor follow on his heels in hot pursuit when he pretends to flee.”
The door swung open, and across the rooftop was Zúñiga’s two-man security detail crouched along the parapet and exchanging fire with the men below. The second white pickup truck had parked outside the garage doors in an attempt to block at least two of them, while the two Federal Police trucks had stopped about thirty yards back, the cops there hunkered down behind their pickups and triggering off volleys of fire when they could to pin down the others. From somewhere in the distance came the rhythmic and approaching drone of a helicopter’s rotors.
Corrales rushed to the edge of the parapet, and, one-handing his M16, cut loose a volley on the truck below, where the machine-gunner had positioned himself behind the back wheel.
Moore slung his arm beneath Corrales’s chin, choking him and forcing him back from the ledge as the gunner’s response chewed into the parapet and through Corrales’s ghost. “Stay the fuck back!” Moore screamed. The stupid punk would get himself killed before he had a chance to talk. And that,
Moore knew, would be just his luck.
Zúñiga shouted to his men to cover him, while he ran beside the parapet to the other side of the roof, facing the back of the house, where the drainpipe ran down the wall to the ground. “Here!” he cried. “We can climb down here!”
Moore nodded his okay, was about to turn to Corrales—
When the door leading out onto the roof swung open, and one of the Aztecas, his face cast in half-shadow, lifted an AK-47 and let loose a vicious spray that tore into Zúñiga’s chest and sent him staggering back toward the parapet.
Moore was only a half-second behind in his reaction, but he couldn’t save the man. He squeezed off at least ten rounds into the Azteca, drumming the guy back into the door, where he slumped, leaving a blood trail above him.
And by the time Moore turned his head, Zúñiga was already gone, having tripped over the parapet to vanish over the edge.
Moore rushed over and leaned out for a look. Zúñiga lay there, crucified against the dirt, his shirt still blossoming with blood.
“Have you ever lost anyone close to you, a young man like yourself? Do you know what real pain feels like?”
Zúñiga had asked Moore those questions back at the Sacred Heart Church. They both knew real pain, and now one of them had finally found relief.
Corrales joined Moore, took one look at Zúñiga, then cursed at the guys below and ran forward to the front ledge. There, he cut loose with his rifle before Moore could stop him. He’d removed his sling but was still favoring his right arm and swinging the weapon wildly.
Gritting his teeth, Moore rose and sprinted toward the idiot, who was still firing and drawing the return fire of everyone below. Moore tackled Corrales, wrenched away his rifle, then rolled him over and delivered a roundhouse squarely into the kid’s jaw. “I’ll fuck you up even more if you do that again! You hear me?”