Against All Enemies mm-1

by Tom Clancy

  Talwar parked the van a few spots down, got out, and joined them.

  “The journey here was far more difficult than the actual mission will be,” said Niazi.

  Samad grinned. “Look around. These people won’t even react. They’ll stay in their cars, and pretend they’re watching this all on TV.”

  “Someone will have a phone camera on us for the second launch,” said Talwar. “And then we will be on CNN. And they can watch it all again.”

  A car came around the row — airport security — and Samad quickly lifted his cell phone and pretended to talk.

  The car paused before them, the window going down. “You need to get back in your vehicles,” said a bored-sounding black man.

  Samad nodded, smiled, waved, and they headed back.

  They’d return tomorrow evening for a true dry run, and then, the following night, the phone calls would be made, the teams positioned, and their destinies would unfold before them.

  DEA Office of Diversion Control

  San Diego, California

  Towers turned over the flash drive to analysts at the office and was eager to remain with them to study Corrales’s purported evidence against the cartel. Moore told the man that the spirit was willing but the flesh had been shot at a bit too much, and he was happy to return to the hotel for some shut-eye. He didn’t actually fall asleep until nearly two a.m., and when he did, he found himself back on Zúñiga’s roof, watching as bullets riddled Frank Carmichael’s chest and he plunged to the dirt. Sonia kept telling Moore to stop weeping and that he had a mission and that he’d saved her life and that had to account for something. Not everyone died around him. Not everyone.

  She was a stunning woman, and he felt guilty over feeling that way, as though he were betraying Leslie. But Leslie was so far away, and they both knew in their hearts that what they had was no more than a fling, two desperate people trying to find happiness in a land with so much misery and death. He could easily fall in love with Sonia, her youth very much appealing to a man his age, and he hadn’t realized until now that saving her really did mean much more than completing a mission objective.

  Towers called him at 7:30 a.m. “How’re you doing?”

  “I’m doing.”

  “I need you to get down here.”

  “You sound exhausted.”

  “I’ve been here all night.”

  “Hey, you know, I appreciate that.”

  “Just get here.”

  Moore climbed out of bed, pulled on some clothes, and hopped in the rental car.

  The girl at the Starbucks counter asked him if he was all right.

  “Just had a bunch of people trying to kill me last night,” he quipped.

  “My boyfriend does that all the time,” she said. “Stays up all night playing Call of Duty, and then he’s a grumpy asshat all day …”

  Moore accepted his coffee and handed over his credit card. “Thanks for the tip. I’ll try not to be a grumpy asshat today.” He winked and rushed out.

  At the office, he found Towers — who looked like death warmed over — sitting with a group of analysts. He rose, tucked a folder under his arm, then gestured that they head back into the conference room. Once they were inside, Moore asked about Corrales.

  “We put him up in the same hotel, got a couple of people running security. We think we got a couple of Juárez spotters watching this place now, too.”

  “No surprise.”

  “Got some news about those police cars and vans from Calexico. They found the kid who did the painting. One of your guys was there to question him. He IDed your buddy Gallagher.”

  “What’s Gallagher doing? Working for the cartel, the Taliban, or both?”

  “You’ll find out. For now you boys have a major breach.”

  “I just …they told me I could trust that guy, a good guy, a case officer for a lot of years. What happened?”

  “Money,” Towers said curtly.

  “I hope they’re paying him a fortune. He’ll need it to hide from us. Now, what about Rojas?”

  “I don’t know where to begin.” Towers rubbed his eyes and glanced away. “The situation is …complicated.”

  “What’s wrong? Corrales didn’t give us anything?”

  “Oh, no, he’s got some great stuff. We’ve IDed the cartel’s main supplier in Bogotá, guy named Ballesteros. We’re already working with the Colombian government to lock him up, but the timing is crucial. Corrales even got some intel on Rahmani’s location in Waziristan.”

  “Nice.”

  “We’re following up on that, too.”

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  Towers pursed his lips and hesitated again. “Let me take it from the beginning. Jorge Rojas is one of the richest men in the world, and one of the most famous men in Mexico. He’s done more for the Mexican people than the government has. He’s a celebrity, a saint.”

  “And he’s financed it all with drug money. His companies stay afloat with drug money. Thousands have died because of him and his drug money.”

  Towers waved off the arguments. “Do you know who Rojas’s brother-in-law is? Arturo González, the governor of Chihuahua.”

  “Cut to the chase.”

  “Rojas is also in bed with the chief justice of Mexico’s Supreme Court. He’s gone on vacations with the attorney general and is godfather to the man’s oldest boy.”

  “So what? I’m sure he hangs out on weekends with the president of Mexico. He’s still a fucking drug dealer.”

  Towers opened the folder he’d taken along and riffled through some documents. “Okay, I had them do some research for me on the Mexican government, since I’m a layman. Listen to this: According to the Constitution of 1917, the states and federation are free and sovereign and have their own congresses and constitutions, while the Federal District has only limited autonomy, with a local congress and its own government.”

  “So the states have a lot more power. Why do we care?”

  “Because there’s enough right here to keep Rojas from ever seeing justice. The governor of Chihuahua — Rojas’s brother-in-law — has sovereign power and would never give him up to the federal court system. And even if he did, with the chief justice and attorney general in his pocket, Rojas would walk. On top of that, capital punishment was abolished in 1930, except for crimes against national security, so he’d never get the death penalty.”

  “Let me understand this. After losing three good people, there’s not a damned thing we can do? Corrales has the evidence. Let’s turn it over to our court system. Get Rojas put up on federal narcotics trafficking and conspiracy charges.”

  Towers raised his palms. “Slow down. Think about your leak with Gallagher. He’s talking to Rahmani, and Rahmani’s talking to Rojas. It’ll take two to three weeks to process this evidence, and then we have to hope that the judge finds Corrales credible, even though he’s clearly out for revenge — which doesn’t help our case. And during all that time, we need to hope that your buddy Gallagher doesn’t send word back that we’re trying to indict Rojas, because if he gets tipped off, he’ll disappear. I’ll bet he’s got properties all over the world that no one even knows about. He’ll drop off the grid, and it’ll take years to find him, if ever.”

  “We’ve got Sonia on the inside. He can’t go into hiding.”

  “There’s no guarantee Rojas will take her along. He’s kept his involvement in the cartel a secret from his own son. That’s made Sonia’s operation extremely difficult. She’s tried repeatedly to gather evidence, get into his computers, but she’s come up short every time. He’s got electronic sweepers throughout the house, so we can’t even wiretap him without him knowing about it. You see, Moore, when we got into this, we had no idea it’d all lead back to a guy like Rojas. I mean, look at Zúñiga. He’s much more typical and easy to indict.”

  “Like that guy Niebla up in Chicago. They held him in Mexico for eleven months, then we got him extradited.”

  “Yeah, because the
Mexican government thought he was a bad guy. He had no friends there. He was working with Zúñiga, so of course Rojas leaned on his friends to get rid of the guy. But Rojas …Jesus …He’s got the world by the balls. He’s the saint of Mexico, and they all love him.”

  Moore threw his hands in the air. “So it was all for nothing?”

  “Look, I’ve got fourteen different agencies working on this. We can turn over the evidence to our people and hope for the best.”

  Moore closed his eyes, thought a moment, then said, “No, we’re not doing that. No way. We need to move now, and we can’t wait for Rojas. That assassination attempt has him laying low. If we start busting his smugglers and suppliers, he’ll realize what’s happening. We need to get him first.”

  “How do we do that and maintain deniability?”

  “Let me make a call. Give me a few minutes.”

  “You want coffee?”

  Moore gestured to the cup in his hand.

  Towers gave a snort. “I didn’t even notice that. I am really tired. I’ll be right back.”

  After speed-dialing a number, Moore got past Chief Slater’s assistant and finally had the man himself. “Sir, it’s my understanding that you were a Force Recon Marine.”

  “You say that in the past tense.”

  “Hooyah, sir. Once a Marine, I know. We’ve got a terrible situation here, and I would appreciate you thinking about this more like a soldier than a spy, if you catch my meaning.” Moore went on to explain the details, and by the time he finished, Slater himself was cursing.

  “So, sir, I think you know what I’m asking.”

  “We need to be very clever about this. Very clever. It’d be easier if we could use the Sinaloas or the Guatemalans, but we can’t trust those bastards.”

  “Can’t trust anyone in Mexico except for the Navy — that’s why I need you to make that call.”

  “I know you trained with those guys, and so did I. They’re good people. There’s at least two commandos there who owe me big-time — if they’re still active-duty. I’ll make the call.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Moore thumbed off the phone and set down his coffee. He closed his eyes again and asked the universe to grant him a molecule of justice.

  Towers returned, still long-faced, and inhaling the steam from his coffee.

  “Good news,” Moore said, drawing Towers’s interest. “Slater’s calling in some favors from the Mexican Navy.”

  “So what do you have in mind?”

  Moore took a deep breath. “Obviously, we can’t get the American or Mexican governments involved in any of this. Our President needs deniability, and Rojas would be tipped off if we tried to negotiate formally with his government. However, we might be able to do some business with the Mexican Navy’s Special Forces guys. Basically, we hire ourselves a platoon or two that won’t tip off their government. Those guys are gungho and would like nothing more than to take down a scumbag drug smuggler. They’ll get onboard so that when word gets out, it appears the Mexican Navy did the job. Our President can stand at the podium and say we had nothing to do with this.”

  Towers smiled. “We just turn their Special Forces guys into mercenaries.”

  “I’m telling you, they’ll do it. They’ll say they had to act on their own because of corruption in their government. So, we go down there at the invitation of those guys, we set up a raid on Rojas’s mansion, and we get the bastard. We let Slater pay off the Navy and let them confiscate everything else.”

  “You’ll need to get Sonia out of there first.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “What about Rojas? What do we do with him if we actually capture him?”

  “What do you mean capture?”

  Towers raised his palms. “Hey, slow down. He’s the only guy who knows how all the pieces fit together.”

  “Let me ask you something — are we getting enough from Corrales to bring down the cartel?”

  Towers squinted to process that. “The little runt knows a lot more than I thought. We’ve got enough to cause major damage.”

  “Then fuck Rojas. I’m not worrying about capturing him. My plan is to take him out.”

  “He’s more valuable alive, but I’ll concede that keeping him alive would be a security threat and a logistical nightmare. If we turn him over to the Navy, they’ll have to cap him anyway — otherwise, he’ll walk.”

  “Don’t overthink it.”

  Five minutes later, Moore’s phone rang. Slater. “Good news,” he said. “We just hired some Special Forces from the Mexican Navy. Hooyah.”

  38 BY INVITATION ONLY

  Rojas Mansion

  Cuernavaca, Mexico

  56 Miles South of Mexico City

  All the financial news that reached Jorge Rojas’s desk that morning should have lifted his spirits. The Dow, the NASDAQ, and the S&P 500 were all up, and the IPC of the Bolsa Mexicana de Valores, which represented thirty-five stocks and was the broadest indicator of the BMV’s overall performance, was looking excellent. The IPC was especially important, because Rojas’s companies represented forty-three percent of that statistic. Indeed, his investments were earning solid returns and his companies were reporting increased profits for the quarter.

  Why, then, was Rojas staring bitterly into his morning cup of coffee?

  Because of so many things …because of the lie he’d been telling his son …because of the loss of his wife that pained him every day …because of this new threat to the business that he both loved and loathed …

  What had happened to him? He hadn’t built his empire on tears but on sweat. He hadn’t crushed his opponents by weeping when they struck. He always struck back tenfold.

  He had the money. He had the guns. But no, he wasn’t any better or different from them, from the scumbags who sold drugs on the playgrounds, from the gangsters who stole from their grandmothers to feed their addictions. He was already a corpse in a bulletproof suit, sitting in a mansion and feeling sorry for the loss of his soul. While he never shared his secrets with Alexsi, she saw his pain and often suggested he seek professional help. Rojas would have none of that. He needed to thrust out his chest and move on, as he always did, even after staring into his brother’s lifeless eyes.

  He checked his smartphone once more. Nothing. Rojas had been trying to contact Mullah Rahmani, but the man had not returned his calls. Samad’s number had been disconnected. Castillo had told Rojas that the police cars in Calexico had been driven by Arabs and that a local kid had been hired to paint the cars. Rojas had already concluded that Samad and his entourage had murdered Pedro Romero and gained access to the tunnels. After ordering his men to destroy the tunnel, Castillo said, Romero’s family had been found dead in their home, all shot in the back of the head, execution-style. Corrales was still missing, although Fernando had believed that he’d gone to Zúñiga’s ranch house. A gunfight there had left Zúñiga dead. Spotters reported that a woman’s body had been brought out of the house. She may have been Corrales’s girlfriend, María, but none of the spotters had identified Corrales. Federal agents who may have been acting as spies had fled in a helicopter. The spotters could not get a good look at them. Rojas feared that Corrales had gone to the authorities, either Mexican or American. And worse, Fernando had reported that their best contact with the Federal Police, Inspector Alberto Gómez, had disappeared.

  It was time to start closing out accounts, moving money, emptying drawers, and switching locks. He’d become an expert at concealing his ties to the cartel through legitimate businesses and fiercely loyal employees who had never once threatened to expose him. Everything was different now.

  His phone rang, and the number caused him to jolt in his chair. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Señor Rojas.” The man spoke in Spanish, but Rojas winced over the accent.

  “Rahmani, why haven’t you returned my calls?”

  “I’ve been traveling, and the cell-phone reception has not been good.”

  “I don’t believe you.
Where are you now?”

  “Back home.”

  “Now, before you say another word, you listen to me very carefully. Samad came to me in Bogotá with some long sob story about a sick imam. He was looking for safe passage into the United States. He tried to bribe me with IEDs and pistols.”

  “Which I understand you took.”

  “Of course, but you know where I draw the line — we must not wake the sleeping dog.”

  “Señor, please accept my apology. Samad is a rogue and I’ve lost communication with him. Honestly, I’m not sure if he’s in the United States or not. I specifically instructed him to stay away and never jeopardize our relationship, but he is a brash young man, and I will have to make him pay for his mistakes.”

  “If he’s in America, then you and I are finished. I’ll not only stop importing and moving your product, I’ll make sure you can’t move any of it into my country ever again. I will cut you off at the knees. I warned Samad of this, and I tried to warn you earlier when I was in Bogotá, but you never answered my calls. Do you understand me?”

  “Yes, I do, but not to worry. I’ll do what I can to eliminate any problems that Samad may pose to you or your business.”

  Rojas’s tone turned more harsh, the words clearly a threat. “I look forward to hearing from you very soon.”

  “You will. Oh, and one more item. We have a valuable intelligence asset that might be of interest, an American CIA agent who now works for us. I’ll be happy to provide any information he gathers that might affect our businesses. In the meantime, I implore you to keep the product flowing. Do not do anything rash. The dog, as you say, is still asleep, and we will keep him that way.”

  “Find Samad. Then call me.” With that, Rojas thumbed off the phone and looked to the doorway, where Fernando Castillo was waiting.

  “Good morning. J.C. has breakfast ready.”