Against All Enemies mm-1

by Tom Clancy

  Once again American flags were being raised over homes throughout America, and those who’d been largely apathetic about their patriotism suddenly found it once more. Cries in Congress for a military response like the one seen after 9/11 got citizens enraged and protesting for an overwhelming response. Thousands rallied on Capitol Hill. Gun sales increased tenfold. Mosques were bombed and looted.

  Then, on the seventh day after the terror strike, a victory was reported in the tribal lands of Pakistan: Mullah Omar Rahmani was, according to Moore’s colleagues, dead, killed by a Hellfire missile launched from one of the CIA’s Predator drones. His death was the only good news to reach the American people since the attack. The hunt for the other terrorists was ongoing and thus far unsuccessful, despite thousands of man-hours and tens of thousands of leads.

  The President gave a press conference to confirm that the “mastermind” behind the airliner attacks had been killed — and country-music stars were already releasing new songs about how America kicks ass.

  Moore hardly celebrated Rahmani’s demise. He had not heard back from Wazir, and the old man’s silence deeply troubled him and robbed the so-called good news of any pleasure. He told Slater and O’Hara that he would travel to Pakistan himself to ID Rahmani’s body; it was something he had to do. At the same time, he would try to reestablish contact with Wazir. He also reminded his bosses that killing Rahmani might have made it impossible to find the others. While he didn’t like it, Moore understood why his request to have the drones stand down had been denied. The American people wanted blood, and the Agency had been under extreme pressure to give it to them. The days of the Colosseum had returned.

  Moore had flown into Islamabad and thought he’d first stop at the embassy to surprise Leslie. He’d learned through a mutual friend that she’d been transferred from the embassy in Kabul back to the one in Islamabad, where they’d first met.

  He caught her in the parking lot as she was heading out for lunch.

  “Oh my God,” she said, then lowered her glasses to stare over the rim. “Am I dreaming?”

  “No, I am.”

  She shoved him hard in the shoulder. “That’s cheesy, and you, uh, look pretty good. You clean up well. I like the haircut. It reminds me that we should do more to strengthen our bilateral relationship.”

  “You mean we should get something straight between us?”

  “That’s inappropriate.”

  “I’d like to get inappropriate with you.”

  She took a deep breath and turned away.

  “What?”

  “What do you mean ‘What?’ What did you expect? I gave them my two weeks’ notice. I’m leaving at the end of the week, going back to the U.S.”

  He threw his hands up, knowing how much she’d put into the career. “Why?”

  “Because this isn’t for me anymore. I thought a transfer back to Islamabad would make a difference, but it hasn’t. The only thing that made it fun and exciting was you.”

  “No, no, no. You need to slow down. Let’s go over to Club 21 like old times. They still got the best beer in this town.”

  “The only beer in this town.”

  He moved to her, put his hand beneath her chin. “I owed you a real good-bye — not that awkward, uh, whatever that was on the phone, and that’s why I came back. If this made it worse, then I’m just an idiot, but I didn’t want to leave it like that. I felt terrible.”

  “You did?”

  He nodded, and two rounds of beers later, he dropped her off at the embassy, and there was a moment where he held her hand, squeezed it tightly, and said, “You’re going to have a great life.”

  Miran Shah

  North Waziristan

  Near the Afghan Border

  Before driving up to North Waziristan, Moore stopped off at Forward Operating Base Chapman, one of the CIA’s key facilities in Afghanistan, located near the eastern city of Khost. Chapman was the site of the infamous suicide attack that, on December 30, 2009, killed seven CIA operatives, including the chief of the base. The Agency’s primary mission at that time was to gather HUMINT for drone attacks against targets located within the tribal lands, and those attacks had incited retaliation from the Taliban operating across the border. The attack was one of the most lethal ever carried out against the CIA. Moore knew three of the dead men and had spoken on the phone with all the others. He’d walked around in a daze for about a week afterward. It was, for everyone, a devastating loss.

  Rahmani’s body — or what was left of it — had been transferred there, and while the torso had been shredded by the bombs, his face had remained somewhat intact. Moore was probably imagining it, but it almost seemed that he’d died with a sardonic grin on his face.

  Moore arrived in Miran Shah in the late afternoon. The dust and squalor and antiquated influences of Western culture struck him once more. This time, however, without Rana as his driver, he was aggressively stopped by four guards, members of the Army who were pleased to show him the business ends of their AK-47s. Frowning, one of them shouldered his weapon and shook his finger at Moore. “I remember you.”

  “I remember you, too,” Moore lied. “I’m heading up to see Wazir.”

  The guards looked strangely at one another, and then the one who remembered Moore said, “ID, please.”

  Moore waited while the man inspected the document.

  “Okay,” he said, returning the ID. “Where is your young friend?”

  Moore averted his gaze. No reason to lie now. “He died.”

  “Sorry.”

  The guards lowered their rifles, and he was waved on. Moore followed the dirt road, remembering the turn to the right and the ascent through the foothills. He pulled up near the two brick homes with satellite dishes on their roofs and the collection of tents rising behind them. The goats and cows were shifting in their pens behind, and in the valley below were dozens of farmers working the fields. He had never smelled air so clean.

  An old man came out, leaving the door open behind him, and Moore did a double take. This man wore black robes and a matching vest, but his beard was much shorter than Wazir’s. Two more men appeared — soldiers with rifles pointed at Moore. He shut down the engine and stepped out.

  “Who are you?” asked the old man.

  “My name is Khattak. I’ve come to see Wazir.”

  “Wazir?” The old man faced his guards, then gestured for them to return to the house.

  “Is something wrong?” Moore asked.

  The old man made a face. “I’ll take you to see him.” He started around the house and past the tents, working his way along the animal pens and through a serpentine path toward the hillside beyond. Moore followed in silence.

  “So, you are a friend?” the old man finally asked as they mounted the hill.

  “Yes. And you?”

  “Oh, yes. Wazir and I fought the Soviets together.”

  Moore took a deep breath and hoped against fate that his suspicions weren’t true. “What is your name?”

  “Abdullah Yusuff Rana.”

  Moore stopped walking and turned back toward the valley. This was Rana’s grandfather and the reason why young Rana had known Wazir all of his life. Moore wanted very badly to tell the old man that he knew his grandson, that the boy had worked bravely for him, given his life for what he believed in, and that Moore owed him everything.

  “Do you see something?” the old man asked.

  Moore shook his head. “Just beautiful up here.”

  The older Rana shrugged and led him farther up the hill, where near the top lay a deep crater with pulverized stone lying in curious lines and fanning out in all directions. Off to the left was a rectangular mound lying in the shade of three tall trees. A grave.

  Rana pointed. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

  Moore tried to breathe. Tried. “What happened?”

  “I thought you knew.”

  Moore shook his head vigorously.

  Rana looked to the sky. “Wazir
liked to come up here to read and meditate. The drone flew over and dropped the bomb on him. As far as we are concerned, he was a martyr, buried in the clothes he died in, lying on his side and facing Mecca, and it was Allah’s will that he died in his most favorite place.” Rana closed his eyes and added in Arabic, “Inna Lillahi wa Inna ileyhi Raj’oon.”

  Truly we belong to Allah, and truly to Him shall we return.

  “I will leave you alone,” said Rana, heading back the way they’d come.

  Moore stepped over to the grave site. He’d been planning to take Wazir up on his offer:

  “When you’re ready to talk, come back to me. I want to hear your story. I’m an old man. I’m a good listener.”

  I’m sorry, Wazir. You did everything you could for me, and I got you killed. I came here looking for answers. Now I won’t get any. I wanted to tell you about the most difficult thing I’ve done in my life. Do you know what it is? Just trying to forgive myself. I don’t know how.

  Moore rubbed the corners of his eyes, then started back down the hillside. The breeze caught his hair, and he thought he could hear the old man’s voice in his ear, but it was only the rustle of leaves.

  Samad and the rest of those evil bastards would escape because of big bureaucracies and impatience and actionable intelligence that excused murder. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

  When he reached the front of the house, Rana was waiting for him and said, “Please stay for the evening meal.”

  It would be rude for Moore to decline, but he was too depressed to do much more than leave.

  A tug came at his sleeve. It was the boy who’d helped Wazir serve them stew. He was Wazir’s great-grandson, Moore remembered, maybe eight or nine years old. Between his thumb and forefinger was a slip of yellow lined paper folded in half. “My great-grandfather said if you came when he wasn’t home, I should give this to you.”

  44 COLD-TRAILING

  CIA Safe House

  Saidpur Village

  Islamabad, Pakistan

  The entire world’s intelligence and law enforcement assets were hunting for Samad and his men, and Moore had been handed an address on a slip of paper that could very well be the most significant clue anyone had.

  However, that information gave him pause.

  If he turned it over to the Agency, and they in turn released that intel to all agencies worldwide, the hyper-alert Samad with contacts everywhere would vanish before they ever arrived.

  So with the paper tucked tightly into his pocket, Moore had come to the old safe house. It was a bittersweet return. He reflected on the many conversations he’d had with Rana as they’d sat on the balcony among the Margallah Hills, the lights of Islamabad flickering in the distance. He could almost hear the kid’s voice: “What’s wrong, Money? You look really tense now.”

  And he was, while he waited impatiently for all the connections of the video conference he’d set up for himself, Slater, O’Hara, and Towers.

  Once everyone was online, he abandoned all pleasantries and hit them immediately with the news. “I’ve got a credible lead on Samad. It comes from Wazir, and I trust it. I’m flying out tonight.”

  “You know where Samad is?” asked O’Hara.

  “I might.”

  “Then let’s get a team together,” said Slater. “How many guys you need? Ten? Twelve?”

  Moore shook his head. “Look, if he’s on the run, he’s traveling with his two lieutenants. That’s it. Maybe Gallagher’s helping them, I don’t know. Point is, Towers and I got this.”

  “You’re pitching a two-man show? Are you kidding me?” asked O’Hara, raising his voice.

  “No, sir. I’m not.”

  O’Hara leaned toward the camera. “We need to capture this guy alive — because we’re hearing he’ll take over for Rahmani, and that means he’s already got significant operational intelligence. We also assume he knows where the rest of the missile teams are, and not a one of those guys has been captured. Make no mistake: Samad is the Highest-Value Target in the world right now.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, the importance of the target does not necessarily dictate the size and scope of the operation. If my lead is solid, our target is already out of the U.S., and if you saddle me with a team to go down there, we’re harder to move, harder to hide, and we make a lot more noise. If the operation goes south, you’ve got an increased likelihood of witnesses, bodies, and yes, you’ve been there, done that. Towers and I will barely make a ripple. You go in there with big guns, and our guy will be long gone.”

  O’Hara sighed. “So you want to go down there. Exactly where is that?”

  “I’ve got an address in Mexico — and given what you’ve just said, it’s not only imperative that we take Samad alive but that we’re able to question him without political interference.”

  Slater cleared his throat and weighed in. “Moore, if you and Towers get this bastard, I don’t want any other agencies involved. I don’t want the administration involved — no one, that is, until we’ve had our time with him.”

  “We’re on the same page. So we’re talking about rendition.”

  “Gentlemen, whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down,” said O’Hara. “I can neither confirm nor deny I’ve heard any of this, and I’ll need to step out at this time.” He rose, giving them a hard look and a thumbs-up.

  “We understand,” said Slater.

  After 9/11, approximately three thousand suspected terrorist prisoners were captured and imprisoned by the CIA, an act known as “extraordinary rendition.” These prisoners were transferred around the world to top-secret detention centers known as “black sites,” many of them in Europe. The Council of Europe and a majority of the European Union parliament claimed that these prisoners were tortured and that both the United States and British governments were well aware of the entire operation. A more recent Executive Order signed by the President of the United States opposed rendition torture.

  Consequently, O’Hara was excusing himself because he needed deniability. He would not knowingly order Moore to capture Samad then have him transferred to a black site for torture. The United States government did not engage in acts of torture, did not transfer people to places where officials knew they’d be tortured, and black sites no longer existed.

  On the other hand, Slater was thankfully still living in the past. He lifted his voice: “You capture that bastard, and I’ll work with you all the way.”

  “Then here’s the deal,” said Moore. “No teams, no other U.S. forces involved. We keep the administration clean. Just Towers and I. No witnesses. You let us hunt Samad down our way — and then you’ll get your rendition, and we’ll get what we need out of that miserable fuck, no matter what it takes. Otherwise, Washington gets involved, he’s moved into military jurisdiction …and even if Samad never sees the inside of a courtroom and rots away at Gitmo, he’ll never be put in a position to tell us what we want. We get him, we get what we need, then we stage some fake capture and turn him over to the administration and let them play with him — after we’ve already bled him dry. My point is, if we don’t have this all planned first, then capturing him is a waste of time. His intel is worth more than his life.”

  “Wow,” said Towers with a gasp. “Wow.”

  “Mr. Towers, you sure you want in?” asked Slater. “This could get ugly, as in career-ending ugly.”

  Towers snorted and checked his watch. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t have time to talk. I need to catch a plane.”

  “Call me on your way to the airport,” said Moore. Towers broke his connection, leaving Moore and Slater alone.

  “I asked him, and I’ll ask you,” began Slater. “You sure you want to do this?”

  “Yeah. Just work with me and don’t change your mind. Don’t bow to the pressure. And don’t forget about all the blood, sweat, and tears we’ve shed trying to flush out these bastards. If Samad can help us disrupt their operations, then it’s worth it.” Moore’s gaze went distant. “I use
d to sit out here on this balcony, talking to Rana about doing just that. So let’s finish what we started.”

  Puerto Penasco/Rocky Point

  Sonora, Mexico

  The gated and security-patrolled beachfront community of Las Conchas was on mainland Mexico’s west coast, overlooking the Gulf of California, and was about four hundred miles west of Ciudad Juárez. The address Wazir had given his great-grandson was for an estate comprising three separate living areas, with three kitchens, eleven bedrooms, and twelve baths. The home was on the market for $2.7 million, and, according to the real estate site that Moore had accessed, it offered 180-degree oceanfront vistas. The home belonged to Mr. David Almonte Borja.

  And with just a little more research, Moore learned that Borja was, in fact, Ernesto Zúñiga’s brother-in-law and, according to Dante Corrales, the most likely heir to the Sinaloa Cartel.

  But here was the kicker: Just forty-eight hours prior, Borja had been taken into custody by Federal Police inspectors and was being held in Mexico City on murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and drug-smuggling charges. The timing of his arrest was not entirely coincidental; Federal Police Inspector Alberto Gómez had named two colleagues who had, in turn, given up many more details regarding Borja and his relationship to the cartel.

  That Las Conchas had its own security force made accessing the community even easier. Moore and Towers met with the security company’s owner, who understood the English alphabet very well: CIA.

  The owner said that according to his guards, no one had been in the house since Borja had been arrested. Had the real estate agent shown the home to anyone? They didn’t think so. Multimillion-dollar homes seldom drew a lot of traffic, and were shown by appointment only after the potential buyer had been prequalified.

  “Give your guards the night off with pay,” Moore told the man. “We’ll cover it.”

  “Okay.”

  They left him and went to see the real estate agent, an elegant woman in her late fifties who bore a striking resemblance to the movie star Sophia Loren. She was equally cooperative and somewhat depressed because she’d learned of Borja’s arrest and would lose a major commission. She gave them the code to the lockbox on the front door and the code to disarm the security system. Moore would not have minded picking the lock; there were few companies on the planet who could machine their parts to near flawless tolerances and still make money, which of course kept locksmiths, thieves, and spies in business.