Teller suppressed a shudder. The NDAA again. “What about all the others we rounded up at the Grove?”
“In custody. Undergoing questioning. Walker and Delaney are cooperating with the AG, as are Logan and the others—all except Escalante, of course. The whole affair is being kept quiet. You can imagine what would happen to oil prices if the North American Oil scandal becomes public knowledge. Mr. Gonzales will be impeached, will probably be indicted on charges of racketeering—his involvement with the cartels. All in all, very, very messy.”
“And the Iranian? Reyshahri?”
“At an undisclosed location with the Company. I gather he’s cooperating fully. My contacts at Langley tell me they’re learning a great deal about the inside workings of Iranian intelligence from him.”
“I guess that wraps things up, then,” Teller said.
“Almost. You two should know that we’re officially shutting down Cellmap.”
“What?” Teller was startled. “Why?”
“Wiretapping Mexican citizens engaged in the drug trade is one thing,” MacDonald said. “Deliberately wiretapping American citizens is something else.”
“It wasn’t deliberate. The virus jumps from phone to phone all by itself. Doesn’t distinguish between one side of the border or the other at all.”
“Nevertheless, we’re hitting the kill switch.” The Cellmap virus, Teller had been told, included code that disabled the software if it received a signal from its controllers, a kill switch.
“If this became public knowledge,” MacDonald continued, “there’d be a firestorm, maybe worse than the controversy over NDAA 2012. The White House is very concerned that this technology be … properly controlled. And kept quiet.”
Which might well mean they would keep using it, but keep the fact as deeply buried as the knowledge of Z-backscatter vans conducting personal searches without warrants, or a scandal that had reached all the way into the White House.
She had said “officially shutting down Cellmap.”
Fourth Amendment be damned.
“Oh … one last thing.”
She picked up a single piece of paper from her desk and handed it to Teller, almost tossing it at him.
Teller broke attention to look at it.
“Congratulations, Captain Teller—you were selected by HRC for promotion to major, effective 1 October. I hope you can stay out of trouble at least until you pin it on. Dismissed.”
He really wanted that drink—it was way overdue.
At the very least, however … perhaps Galen Fletcher now had a measure of peace,
MORALES
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
1345 HOURS, LOCAL TIME
“Mi amigo,” Agustín Morales said with a smile, “estás en uno mundo de la mierda.”
A world of shit. It was a term he’d learned during his training with the U.S. military, one he liked.
Miguel de la Cruz gave another piercing scream, back arching convulsively as the interrogator applied another jolt of electricity. Stripped naked, tied spread-eagle on a large and filthy wooden table with electrodes clipped here and there, de la Cruz was smeared with sweat, blood, and excrement, scarcely recognizable now as human.
“Please!” he gasped, chest heaving. “Please! What is it you want me to tell you?”
“Tell me? Why, absolutely nothing. I already know everything. In particular, I know how you risked our entire operation by sending those spies to the Escalante safe house. You jeopardized our operation in the United States. You cost us an important asset, Enrique Barrón, and both he and the Perez bitch are singing to the Americans now.”
Morales’s pleasant smile darkened. His agents in Florida had reported that both Barrón and Perez were there, in custody. They couldn’t be reached … now.
There would be other opportunities.
“I didn’t know Escalante was a part of it! Please!”
“Ah, well, now you know.” Morales looked at the interrogator. “Give him … let’s say, three days. Let him truly understand the consequences of his ignorance. Then end it.”
“Sí, Calavera. Con mucho gusto.”
The former CISEN officer turned cartel informant shrieked again as the Skull walked out of the basement room.
He would have to discuss this with El Chapo, the Sinaloan boss of bosses. The Iranian affair had been damned expensive, with little to show for it. The Iranians’ promises hadn’t counted for much after all.
Much worse was the possibility that Perez, Barrón, or Escalante would give away too much. How much had the enemy learned? How much would they learn?
In the long run, Morales thought, it probably didn’t matter that much. A lot of street-level cowboys might get caught. Perhaps a few of the high-ranking ones as well, but not even Escalante knew enough to really cripple the organization.
In the meantime, the yanqui government would fuss and fume and debate and pass laws and rescind them, and in the long run not much of anything would be accomplished. There were still lots of people within the American government deeply and solidly in the pockets of Sinaloa, Los Zetas, and the others.
So long as the incredible norteamericano appetite for product remained, the organization would continue to thrive.
U.S.–MEXICAN BORDER
2 MILES EAST OF NOGALES, ARIZONA
1725 HOURS, MST
“Freeze, dirtball! ¡No mueva!”
Ernesto Jesús Mendoza scrambled up off the struggling girl, his trousers nearly tripping him as they bunched around his feet. “No disparar!” he cried, raising his hands. “Don’t shoot!”
“Step away from the gun, hombre,” one of the men nearby said, gesturing with an M-15—the semiauto version of a military assault rifle. Mendoza had a holstered pistol in the belt at his ankles. “And get away from her.”
The posse was a mixed bag of ranchers and county law enforcement. Nathan Spangler, a deputy on the Nogales police force, took another look at the map displayed on his smart phone, then switched it off. “So … Ernesto Mendoza?”
“¿Que—? How is it you know this?” the man cried, managing to kick free of his pants and belt. “You have no right—”
“I got all kinds of right, amigo,” one of the civilian men said. “This here’s my land, and you boys’re trespassing.” He looked Mendoza up and down. “Indecent exposure, too, looks like.”
“We’re not Border Patrol, if that’s what you mean,” Spangler told him.
“That’s right,” another rancher said. “We’re not nearly that nice.”
Elsewhere in the small arroyo, other members of the posse were rounding up the other coyotes. There were five of them, plus a dozen filthy men and women. The coyotes had herded four young women together underneath a broad, low-spreading tree brightly festooned with panties and bras and had been in the process of raping them when the Minuteman Patrol had finally caught up with them.
Mendoza managed a terrified smile. “Look … we can work this out, yes?” He spread his hands. “I can … I can talk to people who will make you, all of you, incredibly wealthy!”
The gunshot cracked across the desert. Mendoza’s back arched sharply, and then he crumpled to the ground. Behind him, momentarily forgotten, the young Mexican woman, naked and filthy, clutched Mendoza’s pistol in two tiny hands.
“Cabrón,” she spat, an epithet that meant both “billy goat” and “bastard.”
“Son of a bitch,” Spangler said, looking down at the body. “Looks to me like the bastard got shot trying to escape.”
HAMMER ONE
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
1820 HOURS, LOCAL TIME
Gunnery Sergeant Antonio Sanchez stared into the electronic eyepiece of his Barrett .50, unmoving, relaxed … and bored. Were those two never going to stop?
Beside him, James Edward Clarke was restless. “Can’t you take the shot?”
“No,” Sanchez replied. “I can’t. Not without risking hitting the girl.”
“Collateral damage is only to b
e expected—”
“Negative. Not on my watch. Sir.”
Sanchez was a Recon Marine sniper, and a very good one. He took pride in his work, and he was not going to blow both of those people away with one round just because a stuffed suit out of Langley was getting impatient.
Besides, it was kind of nice that the target was getting to have one last fling before the hammer fell.
The technology was amazing, and Sanchez wished he’d had it in Iraq. More than once, during his three deployments to that unhappy hellhole, he’d nailed insurgents from a mile away through a solid concrete wall, but he’d had to take a guess as to their positions. The backscatter device hooked up to his sniper scope and to Clarke’s computer monitor was peeking right through the wall of the apartment across Emiliano Zapata Street and into the bedroom.
Those two had been at it for a couple of hours now.
“Who s this guy, anyway?” Sanchez asked.
“You don’t need to know.”
“Fair enough.” Sanchez was a CIA contract employee, hired for certain operations requiring his deadly and precise skills. He rarely knew the names or identities of the people he was brought in to terminate.
Clarke seemed to think about it, then relented slightly. “His name is Nicholas,” he said.
“One of ours?”
“He … used to work for us.”
“I see.” Sanchez had been watching the rot spreading through this country. Drug money was everywhere, and anyone, it seemed, could be bought.
Perhaps the rot had spread to Langley as well. That was an unsettling thought.
“We’re sending a message this evening, Sanchez,” Clarke said. “The Company is not for sale.”
In his scope, the plastic-looking man finally rolled off of the woman and sat up at the edge of a ghost-hazy bed. The woman sat up behind him, her hand caressing his back and shoulder. “Target is moving,” Sanchez said.
“Yeah,” Clarke said. “Yeah! Nail the bastard!”
“Wait one.” He followed the man as he stood up, walked past the bed, and headed toward the apartment’s bathroom. Sanchez wanted to be absolutely sure that the woman was out of the line of fire.
He drew a breath … let it out partway … and gently squeezed the trigger.
TELLER CONDO
ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA
1910 HOURS, EDT
Teller’s condo was a classic bachelor’s pad. Located in the Manchester Lakes of the upscale Kingstowne area, it was just three miles from Fort Belvoir. It had been a long and grueling day talking with the INSCOM investigation team. At least he wasn’t going to prison; in fact, they were going to make him a freakin’ major.
They’d stopped asking him about his motivations in going after the cartel thugs at the Perez house and shifted to the details of that contract he and the ISA team had found in the jungle at Cerros.
The Russian submarine, he’d learned, had been thoroughly searched, then finally released. Another international incident, that—but one that the State Department appeared to be smoothing over.
Barrón and Maria Perez had been transferred to different secret locations. Barrón was headed for Supermax; Perez would probably end up in a witness protection program, given a new name and a new identity in exchange for her testimony against Escalante.
A brave woman. He sincerely hoped she survived this. It was terrifying to know just how completely the Mexican cartels had penetrated the United States—its government, its police forces, the hearts and souls of over 170 different cities across the country, at last count.
America’s last lines of defense were crumbling with horrific speed.
The Aztlán threat, at least, was fading away, at least for now. The riots had all but sputtered out as the National Guard took control of barrios and city centers from San Diego to Chicago. The president of Mexico, under pressure from the U.S. secretary of state, had publicly backed away from endorsing the Aztlán Libre movement.
Congress had promised to look again into the issue of illegal immigration on the border and the influence of Mexican drug cartels in American cities. Teller wondered if that would amount to anything worthwhile at all.
Secrecy. Washington, D.C., was awash in secrets, some well kept, others not so much. It was anyone’s guess how the Shah Mat affair was going to shake out. The idea that a cartel-linked conspiracy had reached so high up into the city’s halls of power …
Teller’s thoughts went back to that wooden statue by the pond at the Bohemian Grove. He’d had to look it up later in his laptop: the figure was the patron saint of the Bohemian Club, John of Nepomuk, a priest who, it was said, had died rather than tell a Bohemian ruler, the “good King Wenceslaus” of song and fable, the confessional secrets of the queen.
There were some secrets that must be protected at all costs.
Most secrets, he thought, were simply people in power keeping their own screwups hidden from the people, keeping themselves from looking like idiots—CYA on steroids.
Sometimes, however, the people entrusted with power had to be exposed, or that secrecy became the means of destroying a nation.
Maybe that was Fletcher’s legacy here. A man betrayed, an old-school man of honor who’d discovered that both those under him and above him in the chain of command were corrupt, that the corruption had gone higher and deeper than anyone had suspected. He’d found himself cut off, unable to trust anyone, unable to tell anyone what he knew or suspected.
His suicide, though, had highlighted Nicholas’s treason, and that, in turn, had led to Preston.
Thanks, Galen, Teller thought.
Teller didn’t like the fact of Preston’s ambiguous death—if death it had been. Still, he would do what he’d done again. The next right thing …
His arm hurt, a heavy throbbing pulse. The problem, he thought, was that it was no longer possible to draw clear lines between the good guys and the bad. The Mexican cartels—those were pure evil, no question … but Teller was beginning to question issues of right and wrong he’d not questioned before. The next right thing …
Was it ever right to sacrifice the sacred Constitution of the United States when it became … inconvenient?
Some questions were just too big—or too painful—to face all at once. Galen Fletcher had run into that.
He needed to think.
It was early yet. He could still drive up to Fourteenth Street … have a few drinks, maybe see if Sandra Doherty was on tonight.
Then again …
He hadn’t had a chance to spend time with Jackie since he’d gotten back from California.
What was the next right thing?
He pulled out his cell phone and speed-dialed her number.
Maybe the Filamena, up in Georgetown, for dinner.
ALSO BY LT. COL. ANTHONY SHAFFER
Operation Dark Heart: Spycraft and Special Ops on the Frontlines of Afghanistan—and the Path to Victory
About the Authors
LT. COL. ANTHONY SHAFFER (Ret.) is a Bronze Star Medal recipient and a CIA-trained senior intelligence operations officer with more than twenty-five years of experience in the intelligence community. He is a Senior Fellow and Special Lecturer at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, D.C., and author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Operation Dark Heart.
WILLIAM H. KEITH is the author of more than one hundred and fifty titles, including short stories, nonfiction, and ninety-one novels. His work includes geopolitical technothrillers, historical military fiction, alternative military history, and military science fiction. A former navy hospital corpsman, he lives in western Pennsylvania.
Note: The views expressed in this book are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously.
A THOMAS DUNNE BOO
K.
An imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
THE LAST LINE. Copyright © 2013 by Anthony Shaffer. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.thomasdunnebooks.com
www.stmartins.com
Cover design by James Iocabelli
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Shaffer, Anthony, 1962–
The last line / Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer and William H. Keith.—First edition.
p. cm
ISBN 978-1-250-00775-9 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-01368-2 (e-book)
1. Intelligence officers—Fiction. 2. International relations—Fiction. 3. Suspense fiction. 4. Spy stories. I. Keith, William H. II. Title.
PS3619.H3355L37 2013
813'.6—dc23
2013003729
e-ISBN 9781250013682
First Edition: June 2013
The Last Line Page 40
