by Tom Clancy
The real estate lady smiled guiltily. “This is, uh, okay, this is, you know, maybe the rougher part of town.”
“Yes, no problem,” Moore said, dismissing the gunfire with a wave of his hand. “My new operation will require a lot of security, I know that. I will also require a lot of help and good information—that’s why I would like to talk to the owner myself. Please let him know that.”
“I will. Thank you for looking at the properties, Mr. Howard. I’ll be in touch.”
He shook her hand, then headed back to his car, careful not to look in the direction of the men watching him. He took a seat, lowered the window, and just waited there, checking the most recent photos of the hotel’s exterior and the cars parked there. The men remained. He glanced back, saw that he couldn’t get a tag number, so he started his car and drove off, heading straight for his hotel. A billboard in Spanish touted greyhound racing at a track in the city, with legal betting on the races.
Many years ago Moore and his parents had made a trip to Las Vegas that his father had been dreaming about. The ride had seemed interminable to the ten-year-old Moore, and he’d spent most of his time playing in the backseat with his G.I. Joes and baseball cards. His mother relentlessly complained about the ride being too long and costing too much, while his father retorted with arguments about how it was worth the drive and that he had a system for winning and that numbers were his business. If she would just believe in him for a change, they might have some luck.
There’d been no luck. His father had lost big-time, and there hadn’t been any money for lunch because they needed to fill up the gas tank in order to drive back home. Moore had never been hungrier in his life, and it was then, he thought, sitting for hours in that hot car whose air conditioner had broken, that he began developing a deep hatred for numbers, for gambling, for anything that his father liked. Numbers had, of course, come in handy in his mathematics courses later in life, but back then, money and accounting represented evil obsessions that made his mother cry and made Moore’s stomach ache.
And whenever the teenage Moore watched the film versions of Dickens’s novella A Christmas Carol, he always pictured his father in the role of Scrooge, counting his pennies. His adolescent rebellion, he knew now, was just his way to strike back at his father for not being the superhero Moore wanted him to be. He’d been such an imposing and opinionated man before the cancer had reduced him to a frail shell, then a bloated, drug-filled victim who’d passed away on Christmas Eve, a last laugh against a family who’d ridiculed him.
Moore wished he’d had a father who’d taught him how to be a man, who’d reveled in the pleasures of hunting and fishing and sports, not a pencil-pushing middle manager with a comb-over and a sagging gut. He wanted to love his father, but first he had to respect the man, and the more he reflected on the man’s life, the harder that became.
And so Moore had found not a father figure but a sense of brotherhood in the military. He’d become part of a storied organization whose very name inspired awe and fear in all those who heard it.
“Oh, what did you do in the military?”
“I was a Navy SEAL.”
“Holy shit, really?”
After BUD/S, Moore, along with Frank Carmichael, had been selected for SEAL Team 8 and sent to Little Creek, Virginia, to begin platoon training, what operators called “the real deal,” training for war. He’d spent twenty-four months moving from the workup phase to actual deployment and then to the stand-down phase. He was promoted to E-5 petty officer second class, and by 1996 had received three Letters of Commendation, enough for his CO to recommend him for a slot in Officer Candidate School. He spent twelve long weeks in OCS and graduated as an O-1 ensign. By 1998 he’d become a lieutenant (jg) O-2 with another Letter of Commendation and a Secretary of the Navy Commendation Medal. Because of his exceptional performance, he was deep-selected for early promotion, and in March 2000 became a lieutenant O-3.
Then, in September 2001, all hell broke loose. Moore’s SEAL team was sent to Afghanistan, where they were deployed on numerous Special Reconnaissance missions and earned a Presidential Unit Citation and the Navy Unit Commendation for operations against Taliban insurgents. In March of 2002, he participated in Operation Anaconda, an ultimately successful operation to remove Al-Qaeda and Taliban forces in the Shahi-Kot Valley and Arma Mountains in Afghanistan.
Even Moore himself had difficulty believing that he’d matured so much from his days as a high school punk.
There were, of course, many punks to be found here in Juárez, Moore thought. He pulled into the hotel’s parking lot and snapped off some pictures of the tags of every other car in the lot. He forwarded them to Langley, then went inside and fixed himself a cup of coffee in the lobby while Ignacio watched him. Hammers, saws, and the shouting of construction workers resounded from outside.
“Did your business go okay, señor?” the man asked in English.
Moore answered in Spanish. “Yes, excellent. I’m looking at some very nice properties here in Juárez to expand my business.”
“Señor, that is a great thing. You can bring your clients here. We will take very good care of them. Too many people are afraid to come to Juárez, but we are a new place now. No more violence.”
“Very good.” Moore headed up to his room, which Ignacio had told him would be “cheap, cheap,” because the hotel was still being renovated. Moore had not realized how loud the racket would be since he’d left before the workers had begun their hammering and sawing.
Back in his room, he received all the information the Agency could find on the dark-haired woman, Maria Puentes-Hierra, twenty-two years old, born in Mexico City and girlfriend of Dante Corrales. They didn’t have much else on her, except that she’d spent about a year stripping at Club Monarch, one of the few remaining adult bars in the city. Most of the others had been either closed down by the Federal Police or burned by the Sinaloa Cartel. Monarch was run by the Juárez Cartel and was well protected by the police, who the report indicated were frequent patrons there. Moore assumed Corrales had met the young beauty while she was clutching a tacky metal pole and swimming in disco lights. Love had blossomed among watered-down drinks and cigarette smoke.
After finishing up with that report, Moore checked on the status of his fellow task force members.
Fitzpatrick had returned to the Sinaloa ranch house after his “vacation” in the United States. He and his “boss” Luis Torres were plotting an attack on the Juárez Cartel in retaliation for the explosion at the ranch house that had killed several of Zúñiga’s men and caused more than $10,000 in damage to his main gate and electronic security and surveillance system.
Gloria Vega would begin her first day on the job as an inspector for the Federal Police in Juárez. Moore assumed she’d get an ear- and eyeful.
Ansara checked in to say he was already in Calexico, California, which bordered Mexicali in Mexico, and he was working with agents at the main checkpoints to identify mules and recruit one for their team.
ATF Agent Whittaker was back in Minnesota and on the job, already reconnoitering several storage rental facilities being used by the cartel to stash weapons.
The real estate lady was at her office and making phone calls, which analysts at Langley listened to and interpreted.
And Moore was ready to lie back down on the bed, sip some coffee, and take a little break until they came for him …
As he was grimacing over the coffee grounds on the bottom of his foam cup, he received a text message from a surprising source: Nek Wazir, the old man and informant from North Waziristan. The message unnerved Moore. It simply said: PLEASE CALL ME.
Moore had the man’s satellite phone number, and he immediately dialed, not giving a second thought to the time difference, which he estimated at more than ten hours, so Wazir was texting him at around eleven p.m. his time.
“Hello, Moore?” Wazir asked.
There weren’t many people who knew Moore’s real name, but given Wazir’
s considerable skills and contacts, Moore had trusted him with that most sacred piece of information—in part as a way to seal their trust, and in part to tell the man that he wanted, truly wanted, to be his friend.
“Wazir, it’s me. I received your text. Do you have something for me?”
The old man hesitated, and Moore held his breath.
Moore spent the next hour on the phone with Slater and O’Hara, and it wasn’t until after he’d vented his anger and frustration to his bosses and took a long moment to stare out the window of his room that his eyes finally burned with tears.
The sons of bitches had killed poor Rana. He was just …just a smart boy who’d done a stupid thing: He’d agreed to work with Moore. And not for the money. The kid’s parents were already rich. He was an adventurer who’d wanted more out of life, and somehow, there was a bit of Moore in him, and now they were carrying his body down from the Bajaur tribal area, wrapped in old blankets. They’d cut and burned him for what little he knew. Wazir said he had probably lasted ten, fifteen hours at the most before he’d died. Rumors of the torturing had reached Wazir’s men, who’d gone up to the caves and had found the body. The Taliban had left Rana as a message to any other Pakistanis who chose the “wrong” path of justice.
Moore sat on the bed and let the tears flow. He cursed and cursed again. Then he rose, whirled, drew his Glock from its shoulder holster and aimed it at the window, imagining the heads of the Taliban who had captured Rana.
Then he holstered the pistol, caught his breath, and returned to the bed. Oh, hell, if it was time to feel sorry for himself, he might as well get through it now, before the guys tailing him came knocking.
He sent Leslie a text message, told her he missed her, told her to send him another picture of herself, that things weren’t going so well and he could use some cheering up. He waited a few minutes, but it was late over there, and she didn’t reply. He lay back on the bed and felt overwhelmed by that same feeling he’d had during BUD/S, that suffocating desire to surrender and accept defeat. He wished that Frank Carmichael were with him now, to convince him that Khodai’s death and the kid’s death meant something and that walking away was far worse than anything else he could do. Yet another voice inside, a voice that seemed far more reasonable, told him that he wasn’t getting any younger, that there were far less dangerous and lucrative ways to make money, as, say, a consultant for a private security firm or as a sales rep for one of the big military and police gear manufacturers, and that if he remained in his current position, he would never have a wife and a family. The job was always fun and exciting until someone you knew, someone you had fostered a deep relationship with, a relationship built on profound respect and trust, was tortured and murdered. Every time Moore let down his guard and allowed himself to truly feel for someone, that relationship would be wrenched away. Was this how he wanted to live the rest of his life?
Back in late 1994, Moore and Carmichael were in a bar in Little Creek, Virginia, celebrating the fact that they were about to become counterterrorism specialists with their new SEAL team. They were talking to another SEAL, nicknamed Captain Nemo, a gunner’s mate second class who was assigned to Task Unit BRAVO as the SEAL delivery vehicle pilot and Ordnance Engineering Department head. During a proof-of-concept full-mission rehearsal in which Nemo was piloting the SDV, one of his fellow operators had accidentally drowned. He’d refused to go into the details of the incident, but both Moore and Carmichael had heard about it before meeting the guy, who they learned was ready to leave the SEALs. He felt responsible for what had happened, even though the investigation had cleared him of any wrongdoing.
There they were, Moore and Carmichael, getting ready to embark on their careers as SEAL operators—and Nemo was putting a real damper on their celebration.
Again, good old Carmichael had stepped in with his words of wisdom: “There’s no way you can quit,” he’d told Nemo.
“Oh, yeah, why?”
“Because who else is going to do it?”
Nemo smirked. “You guys. The new guys, the ones who are too naive to realize that it’s just not worth it.”
“Listen to me, bro. That we’re here is a gift. We answered the call because deep down—and I want you to think about this—deep down we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that we weren’t born to live ordinary lives. We knew that when we were kids. And we know it now. You can’t escape that feeling. You’ll have it for the rest of your life, whether you quit now or not. And if you quit, you’ll regret it. You’ll look around and think, I don’t belong here. I belong there.”
Moore stood up from the bed in his hotel room, whirled around, and muttered aloud, “I belong here, damn it.”
His phone beeped with a text message. He checked it. Leslie. He sighed.
A SANGRE FRÍA
Delicias Police Station
Juárez, Mexico
GLORIA VEGA HOPPED into the passenger’s side of an F-150 4x4 with the words Policía Federal emblazoned across the doors. She wore full tactical gear, including a Kevlar vest, a balaclava pulled over her face, and a helmet secured tightly by its chinstrap. She carried two Glocks holstered at her hips and a Heckler & Koch MP5 nine-millimeter submachine gun whose barrel she held up near her shoulder. That a police inspector had to don this kind of gear and arm herself for bear would be a real eye-opener for some of the detectives back home, she thought. Those slackers could arrive at a crime scene in plainclothes with just a single sidearm, no vests, and doughnut powder staining their lips.
The graying man at the wheel, Alberto Gómez, was dressed similarly to Vega and had warned her that visiting the crime scenes “after the fact” could be as dangerous as the initial incidents themselves. Bodies were all too often used as bait to lure in police so the sicarios could blow them up, taking police with them. Sometimes, if the bodies weren’t booby-trapped, snipers would be posted along the rooftops, and again, the police would be set up for a mass killing.
And so the days of operating in plainclothes were over for the inspectors, Gómez had told her with a shrug. He’d scrutinized her with eyes so weary that she wondered why he hadn’t retired already.
Well, then again, she knew why. She hadn’t been paired with him by accident. While the Federal Police had no definitive proof, Gómez was at the top of their list of inspectors with ties to the cartels. Sadly, he’d had so many years on the job and so many “successful” busts that no one wanted to implicate the old man. There was an implicit understanding that he would finish out his few years and retire, and that no one should interfere with that. He was a real family man, with four kids and eleven grandchildren, and he volunteered at the local schools to teach the kids about crime and safety. He was an usher at his local Catholic church and a well-known member of the Knights of Columbus who had risen up to the role of district deputy. He volunteered at the local hospital, and if he could, he would spend weekends helping old ladies cross the street.
All of which Vega suspected was an elaborate cover, a false life that made him feel better about being on the cartel’s payroll.
Senior-ranking members of the Federal Police, particularly the newer administrators and hires, had a much more aggressive and zero-tolerance policy for corruption, while the local districts too often looked the other way—out of respect, seniority, and, most of all, fear. And so it was that Vega was seated beside a man who could be one of the dirtiest in all of Juárez.
“We have three bodies. When we get there, say nothing,” Gómez told her.
“Why not?”
“Because they don’t need to know anything from you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I don’t care how many years you spent in Mexico City. I don’t care about your long and impressive record. I don’t care about your promotion or about all the kind words your colleagues have said about you in your file. All I care about now is helping you to stay alive. Do you understand me, young lady?”
“I understand you. B
ut I don’t understand why I’m not permitted to talk. I’m not sure if you realize this, but women in Mexico are allowed to vote and run for public office. Maybe you haven’t picked up a newspaper in a while.”
“You see? That is your problem. That attitude. I suggest you put that into your purse and never take it out, so long as you are here, in Ciudad Juárez.”
“Oh, let me see if I can find my purse. Oh, all I have are these big guns and extra magazines.”
He smirked.
She shook her head and gritted her teeth. Eight years in Army Intelligence and four years as a seasoned CIA field officer had led her to this: sitting in a car and taking machismo crap from a broken-down and corrupt Federal Police inspector. The miscarriage, the divorce, the alienation of her brothers and sisters …and for what? This? She turned to Gómez and burned him with her glare.
They listened to the other units over the radio, and within ten minutes rolled down a street lined with pink, white, and purple apartment buildings, the alley between them festooned with laundry. A few lanky boys of ten or twelve stood in the doorways, watching them and making calls on their cell phones. They were the cartel’s spotters, and Gómez marked them, too.
At the end of the street, near the next intersection, three bodies blocked the road. Vega yanked a pair of binoculars from the center console and dialed to focus.
They were all young males, two lying prone amid blood pools, the third facing up with a hand clutching his heart. They were dressed in dark jeans and T-shirts, and if they’d been wearing any jewelry, it’d already been stolen. Two police cruisers were parked about twenty meters away, the officers crouching down behind their doors. Gómez parked behind one cruiser and widened his eyes. “Say nothing.”
They got out, and Vega’s gaze swept across the rooftops, where at least a half-dozen men were just sitting up there, watching, a few talking on more cell phones. She clutched her rifle a bit tighter, and her mouth went dry.
