by Scott McEwen
Kashkin hefted the suitcase from the bed to the floor. “The man will never even know I am there. Now take that down to the car for me. I have to pray.”
11
MEXICO,
Jalisco, Puerto Vallarta
Antonio Castañeda was thirty-seven years old and a former member of the Mexican Special Forces. Trained by American Green Berets in the midnineties, he knew a great deal about military operations and the Mexican Army that hunted him. He also knew a thing or two about explosives, and you didn’t need to be Alberto Einstein to know the explosion in Puerto Paloma the night before had been a hell of a lot bigger than anything a footlocker full of C4 could’ve produced. This meant he’d been lied to by the Chechen dogs who had paid to use his tunnel, and he was more than a little sore in the ass about it.
To look at him, however, you would not have guessed he had anything at all unpleasant on his mind. Castañeda was sitting on a white leather sofa in his villa on the west coast of Mexico, sipping tequila and scratching his German shepherd between the ears while a beautiful Mexican woman with long black hair stood behind him massaging his shoulders. He was not a particularly handsome man. His face was heavily pockmarked, and his dark eyes bulged slightly in their sockets. He had recently finished eating dinner with a thirty-four-year-old Chechen member of the RSMB named Marko Dudaev, and they were now relaxing in the living room.
There was a young lady massaging Dudaev as well. She was the other woman’s younger sister, and they looked very much alike.
“Her name is Tanya,” Castañeda said across the thick white marble coffee table. “I’m sorry she doesn’t speak any English.”
Dudaev smiled up at her, his blue eyes glassy from the tequila he was not yet accustomed to drinking. He had never tasted alcohol or smoked marijuana before coming to Mexico, as it was forbidden within Islam, but, as with any religion, some Muslims were more easily led astray than others. “I’m sure we’ll manage,” he said with a playful wink at Tanya, his own English heavily accented. “They say love is an international language.”
Castañeda chortled. “Allow me to thank you for the deposit that was made to the account yesterday.” He was referring to a bank account in the Cayman Islands. “Your people are very punctual when it comes to payment.”
“We try hard to be,” Dudaev said, still gazing up at Tanya, who could not have been a day over nineteen. “It is important to be punctual in business.”
Tanya smiled down at him as she stood kneading the knotted muscles in his neck and shoulders, her touch strong and deft.
“It is, sí,” Castañeda said with a nod, taking a sip from his tequila. “Honesty is important as well, would you not agree?”
“Of course,” Dudaev remarked, obviously enchanted by the young lady with the silky black hair. He took a stiff belt from his own glass, marveling at the feel of being drunk. It was as though he were floating on a cloud without a single care in the world.
“Bueno,” Castañeda said, setting his glass down on the table as he remarked casually to Tanya, “Prepárate, corazón.”
Tanya gave him a knowing wink as he sat back to extend his arms across the back of the sofa. He told the shepherd to go outside, and it trotted out the open door toward the pool, where a number of other women and a half dozen security personnel lounged around. As the dog slipped out, one of the security men got up to close the sliding glass door.
Then Castañeda clapped his hands, rubbing the palms together. “Yes, I agree that honesty is a very important part of business. So, amigo, why didn’t you tell me your people were smuggling nuclear weapons into los Estados Unidos? Why did you lie and tell me the bombs were made from C4?”
Dudaev straightened up in the recliner, Tanya’s hands still working his shoulders. Castañeda’s people had been talking about the detonation in Spanish all day, but Dudaev hadn’t understood a word of it. Castañeda had ordered him kept in the dark until there could be some kind of confirmation by his people in the North. Now that Castañeda had received the necessary verification, it was time to get to the bottom of things, time to try to determine whether there was a way to extricate himself from the deadly trap the Chechens had put him in.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Dudaev said, his expression marked by a trace of fear. “I don’t know about nuclear weapons.”
Castañeda smiled, saying to the girl, “Ahora, corazón.” Now, sweetheart.
Tanya ran the fingers of one hand through Dudaev’s short-cropped hair while reaching nonchalantly into the small of her back to produce a pearl-handled straight razor, and then gracefully slipping the blade beneath his chin and jerking back his head to expose the jugular vein.
Dudaev let out a sharp, startled cry, grabbing the arms of the leather recliner, his entire body going ramrod stiff.
“Keep still now,” Castañeda said to him quietly, signaling for the woman behind him to come around the sofa. “Lorena is going to make an exposition.”
“Don Antonio,” Dudaev said. “Please. This isn’t necessary. We can—”
Tanya pressed the razor into his flesh to shut him up, increasing her grip on the turf of his hair. He gasped, increasing his own grip on the arms of the recliner.
The other woman, Lorena, also held a straight razor. She knelt with it between Dudaev’s legs and began to carefully cut away the crotch of his khaki trousers. Dudaev shivered, a cold sweat breaking out across his chest as she worked the blade with a surgical dexterity, first cutting away the heavy material of his trousers, and then the thin white cotton of his boxer briefs to fully expose his uncircumcised penis and scrotum without so much as nicking him. Both organs were an unbecoming reddish-purple, shrunken to their minimum as if Dudaev had just come from the pool.
Lorena tossed the swatches of cloth aside and sat back on her haunches, awaiting Castañeda’s instructions.
Castañeda smiled, sitting forward to take up his drink again. “Do I have your attention now, Señor Dudaev?” he asked in a friendly voice.
“Yes, Don Antonio,” croaked the terrified Chechen.
Tanya lessened her grip, though only slightly, so he could speak a bit more clearly.
“Gracias,” he muttered, swallowing hard.
Castañeda took a sip from the glass, setting it aside once more. “It is important for you to listen very carefully now. There is no time for games. You will tell me what you know about the bombs your people have smuggled into the United States. If not, Lorena will cut out your heuvos one by one, and Tanya will feed them to you.” He stood up from the sofa, stepping around the marble table, adjusting the tuck of his black silk shirt as he stood frowning over the shuddering Dudaev.
He put his hands into his pockets, and his overall presence took on an unmistakably menacing air. “Pendejo!” he hissed venomously. “Because of you and your lying friends, I will be hunted to the end of the world! I will be labeled a nuclear terrorist! My government will partner with the gringos, and together they will hunt me down like a rabid dog! Do you understand me? There will be no place on earth for me to hide!”
“Yes, Don Antonio, I understand you very well . . . but . . . but, please, I know nothing about nuclear weapons. I can’t imagine what makes you think we have lied to you!”
Castañeda smirked in disgust, turning to lift his drink. “Comienza, Lorena.” Begin.
Lorena took a firm grip on the Chechen’s scrotum, and Tanya pulled back hard on his head, keeping the razor tight against his jugular. Dudaev gasped in pain and then screamed aloud as Lorena sliced out one of his testicles. He reflexively grabbed his groin, but when Tanya depressed the razor hard enough to bite into the flesh of his throat, his bloody hands shot back to the arms of the recliner, his legs quaking uncontrollably as he began to sob. Blood gushed from the incision in his scrotum, running down the front of the recliner to pool on the tile.
Castañeda finished the tequila and tossed a
side the glass, which shattered on the floor. Then he snatched the bloody orb from Lorena’s outstretched hand, savagely jamming it down Dudaev’s throat.
“I know you are lying to me!” he shouted into the gagging man’s face. “The fucking bomb went off, you stinking cabrón! It destroyed an entire town!” He pulled his hand from Dudaev’s throat, wiping it off on the Chechen’s white guayabera shirt, and then watched on, grim faced, as the strangling man finally managed to choke down the testicle.
Dudaev sat coughing, suppressing the urge to vomit. “Please!” he begged, his voice trembling. “I don’t know anything. I’m only a legate—an ambassador!”
Castañeda stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head. “I don’t know what more to tell you, amigo. You only have one huevo left. After that, Lorena will cut out your eyes. And after that . . .” He sighed and held out his hands in exasperation. “After that, I fear life will become very unpleasant for you.”
Lorena took a bloody grip on his scrotum once more.
“Stop!” Dudaev shouted, gnashing his teeth in agony and self-loathing, knowing he deserved this fate for having strayed from the path; for having spent the last month living in sin. “I will tell you,” he sobbed shamefully. “Please, just no more cutting—for the love of Allah!”
“Okay then, amigo,” Castañeda said softly, patting the Chechen on the shoulder. “No more cutting, I promise. Now tell me what you know.”
After Dudaev spilled his guts about the two Russian-made RA-115s, Castañeda signaled Tanya to cut his throat. He would use the information when the time was right. When he needed to save himself, he would contact the CIA.
12
LANGLEY
Robert Pope, director of SAD, the Special Activities Division of the CIA, arrived at the office of the CIA director, George Shroyer. The director and his deputy, Cletus Webb, were expecting him.
“Good morning,” he said, taking a seat in front of Shroyer’s desk. Pope, a tall man in his midsixties with bright blue eyes and a head of thick white hair, was regarded as somewhat eccentric by his CIA counterparts.
“Good morning.” Shroyer was a hawk-faced individual with a bony nose and peering green eyes. He wouldn’t have dared let on, but he’d been extremely relieved when Pope had requested an immediate meeting. On a personal level, he didn’t care for Pope; he was a little bit afraid of him. But he knew that Pope was probably the most gifted member of the US intelligence community, and if he was asking for a meeting less than twenty-four hours after a nuclear bomb had been detonated on American soil—which was what the army had determined to be the case—there was a good chance he had something important to share.
The president had gone surprisingly easy on Shroyer and the directors of the NSA and FBI during their closed meeting in the Oval Office. All three had expected him to ream their asses good for having been caught completely unaware by what was now being called the “New Mexico Event,” particularly with the presidential election only a couple of months away, but the president was leading in the polls by a margin of greater than 20 percent, and his opponent was seen as weak on foreign policy and even weaker on national defense. The president had crushed him during the first televised debate, and the sad truth was that a terrorist attack on the United States would probably only serve to lock up his reelection. Conspiracy theorists were already lighting up the web, accusing the president of having staged the New Mexico Event for that very reason.
If Pope were able to provide Shroyer with something actionable that he could take to the White House, that would put the CIA far out in front of both the FBI and the NSA, which hadn’t been able to provide any intel at all.
“What can we do for you, Bob?” Shroyer asked, concealing the eager anxiety rising in his gut.
Pope offered a small flash drive over the desk. “There’s a WMA file on there I think you gentlemen should find interesting.”
Shroyer clicked the audio file, and the three of them sat listening to the phone conversation between Kashkin and the man with the Arabic accent. When the exchange ended, Shroyer sat gazing quietly at Webb.
Webb understood that he was expected to speak first so that Shroyer would be less likely to end up looking ignorant in front of Pope. “What did we just hear, Bob? Who are they?”
“The Arabic voice was Muhammad Faisal,” Pope replied. “He’s a very minor member of the House of Saud who became a naturalized American citizen last year.” The House of Saud was the Saudi royal family that ruled Saudi Arabia and promoted Salafi Islam. The family was composed of roughly fifteen thousand members, though most of the wealth and power resided with an elite two thousand.
“A member of the Saudi royal family.” Shroyer took off his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. “Okay. So who’s the other guy?”
“We don’t know yet,” Pope said. “We’re working to pin down the accent now. It could be Russian, but it’s more probably Chechen.”
“When was this recorded?” Webb asked.
“About seven this morning, Las Vegas time, and both men were within half a mile of the Luxor casino during the conversation—not more than a quarter mile apart. I believe that’s significant.”
Shroyer stole a suspicious glance at Webb. “Bob, electronic eavesdropping isn’t in your job description—as I seem to recall you pointing out not too long ago. CIA doesn’t even have jurisdiction within the US.”
“That’s never stopped us before,” Pope said matter-of-factly.
Webb cleared his throat, hoping to avert a blowup on Shroyer’s part. “How long have you been spying on Faisal, Bob?”
Pope blinked once. “Since he applied for American citizenship.”
“On your own authority?” Shroyer blurted.
“On a hunch, George.”
Shroyer held his temples for a long moment and then looked up. “All right, let’s get past that. What exactly is this telephone conversation supposed to mean?”
“I think they were talking about the New Mexico Event.”
“It sounded to me like they could’ve been talking about anything.”
“But they were talking about the explosion,” Pope said confidently. “The Chechen said, ‘Everything is going according to plan.’ It has to be related. The timing of this conversation is too close . . . too cryptic.”
Shroyer was still stuck on the fact Pope had so blatantly overstepped his authority and jurisdiction, jeopardizing the CIA director’s own position. At least now he had all he needed to get rid of the enigmatic pain in the ass once and for all. But did he dare? There were rumors about Pope having secret files on various people within the agency and elsewhere in DC. And if the son of a bitch had time enough to spy on apparent nobodies like Muhammad Faisal, who the hell else was he busy using government time to spy on?
“I would hardly call this evidence of any kind,” he said.
“There’s another file on the flash drive,” Pope replied.
Shroyer opened a photo file. The first photo was of an Arabic man dressed in a blue Western-style suit with an open collar. He was in his midthirties, with dark features and a closely trimmed beard.
“That’s Faisal,” Pope said. “In the next photo, you’ll see him eating breakfast with a Salafi fundamentalist named Alik Zakayev two weeks ago at an inn in the Bavarian Alps. Zakayev is Chechen—a known member of the Riyad us-Saliheyn Martyrs’ Brigade.”
Webb sat forward in his chair to see the photo better. “Zakayev . . . the same guy the Russians turned over to us in connection with the Boston bombings?”
Pope nodded. “Yes, as a matter of fact, but he had nothing to do with Boston. That’s why he was released from Guantanamo back in June.”
Shroyer shot a look at Webb. “Why wasn’t I made aware of that?”
The deputy director shrugged. “It’s news to me as well.”
“Given their unlikely location in that p
hoto,” Pope went on, “combined with the fact they’re both Salafi Muslims, I think we should seriously consider—”
“Wait a second,” Shroyer said, holding up his hand. “Isn’t the Saudi family Wahhabi?”
“Salafi and Wahhabi are one in the same,” Pope answered. “The only difference is in what they call themselves. Some Salafi find the term Wahhabi offensive, but that’s a regional issue, nothing to do with a difference in beliefs.” He pushed his glasses up onto his nose. “As I was saying, we need to consider the facts at hand. Faisal was breaking bread with a known member of the RSMB a month ago. And this morning he was talking on the phone—within eight hours of a nuclear blast—to a man who is also very likely a Chechen about something that went wrong.” He shook his head. “This is not coincidence. They were talking about the New Mexico Event. Also, Faisal is a known high-stakes gambler, and we know that Islamic terrorists have used Vegas casinos to raise funds in the past. I believe he’s a fund-raiser hiding in plain sight, using his familial status as a cover.”
“Are you saying the Chechens and the Arabs are working together?” Webb asked.
“We’ve seen it before.”
“Do you have any actual evidence?” Shroyer asked. “You know damn well we can’t accuse a member of the House of Saud without hard evidence, no matter how minor a member he may be.”
“I don’t have any yet, but I know how to get it.”
“How’s that?” Shroyer was more than moderately disappointed by Pope’s supposed intel.“We bring him in,” Pope said. “Sweat him for information.”
Shroyer stole an exasperated glance at Webb. “Bob, the man is not only a member of the Saudi royal family, but you just said yourself that he’s an American citizen now. We don’t sweat American citizens for intelligence.”
“Oh? Since when?”
Shroyer’s face reddened.
“Forget I said that,” Pope said with a wave of a hand. “Being a US citizen strips Faisal of whatever protection his Saudi familial status may have afforded him.”
