by Tom Clancy
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.”
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.”
“Thank you, Fernando. I didn’t realize you were the house butler, too.”
“No, sir. I actually came for something else—two things, in fact …” He took a deep breath and his gaze found the rug.
“What?”
“There was an explosion down in San Martín Texmelucan.”
“The pipeline?”
He nodded. “About fifty people killed. The Zetas ignored our warnings again, and they’re still at it.”
The Gulf Cartel’s gang of sicarios, Los Zetas, had been engaged in tapping into and stealing oil from Pemex, the state-owned and state-run petroleum company. The president of Mexico had come to Rojas for advice and assistance, and while Rojas denied having any direct contact with the cartel, he’d donated money to help bolster local law enforcement and Pemex security in the most vulnerable areas. Meanwhile, Rojas had Castillo contact the Zetas and warn them about further taps. In the current year alone they’d stolen more than nine thousand barrels, enough to fill more than forty tanker trucks. They sold the fuel through their own gas stations and trucking firms, which they’d already established to launder money, as well as selling it on the international black market. Much of that fuel ended up in the United States. Sometimes they mixed stolen fuel with legitimately purchased product to make extra profit. Castillo had often spoken about taking over the Zetas’ operation and enjoying some significant cash flow. While it was true that Rojas gave to the government with one hand and stole from it with the other, jeopardizing the financial stability of the country’s main oil supplier was shortsighted and reckless. Moreover, the operation was much too risky and sloppily run. The current explosion only underscored his reservations.
Rojas swore and glanced away in thought. “Call your friend. Tell him if the Zetas don’t stop their taps, then we’re coming to secure the pipeline on behalf of the government.”
“I will,” said Castillo.
“Now, what about the tunnel we lost?”
“We’ll fill in the hole from our side, deny any knowledge of it being in the warehouse, and s
et up one of the subcontractors to take the fall. I’m already searching for a new engineer and a new tunnel site, but we lost a lot of money there. I hope you understand that destroying it was the right thing to do.”
“Of course, Fernando. You’ve never let me down.”
Castillo grinned mildly, then walked over to Rojas’s desk and slipped a small digital voice recorder from behind one of the many framed photos there. “I received an alert about an unauthorized device in your office. This is the other reason why I’m here.”
“Miguel?”
Castillo nodded.
Rojas mulled over what to do, then blurted out, “Just erase it. And leave it there …”
With a hollow feeling in his stomach, Rojas left the office and padded in his robe toward the kitchen, where at least one thing brought happiness: the sweet aroma of huevos rancheros.
Sonia was staring through the bedroom window, out across the stones of the mansion’s driveway and toward the street below. Miguel came up behind her and slid his arms around her waist. “You smell good,” he said.
“So do you. Are we going to the waterfall today?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You promised. And I was thinking about that resort and spa you told me about—Misión del Sol. We could get massages, and I want to get a pedicure. Then we could stay overnight, do something really romantic. I think we need that.”
Miguel felt the tension pass into his shoulders, as though someone were fastening heavy leather belts around him and tightening them slowly, one hole at a time. “I’m not feeling so good.”
She pulled out of his grip to face him. She studied his eyes, placed her palm on his forehead, and stared at him with pouty lips, a sad little girl. “No fever.”
“It’s not that. Look at this.” He pulled the device from his hip pocket.
“A new phone?”
“It’s a digital voice recorder. I put it in my father’s office last night and I just went in there and got it out. He always makes a lot of calls in the mornings. You know, I’ve thought about doing it for years. He lied to me when we were down in the vault. He lied. I know it. And he doesn’t want me to know, because he’s afraid of what I’ll think of him.”
“Have you listened to it yet?”
“No. I’m afraid.”
She crossed over to the bedroom door and shut it. “It’s okay. You want me to be with you?”
“Yeah.”
They sat on the bed, and he took a deep breath. He hit the play button. Nothing.
“Is it broken?”
“No. And it worked. I know it did.”
“Maybe he found it.”
“Yeah, and if there was anything on there, he erased it, because he doesn’t want to confront me on this.”
“I’m sorry.”
Miguel’s breath quickened. “He has to be hiding something.”
Sonia made a face. “Your father’s not a drug dealer. You keep forgetting all he’s done for Mexico. If he has to deal with the drug cartels—you know, manipulate them, navigate around them—then you should understand that.”
“I don’t think he’s manipulating the drug cartels. I think he is them.”
“You’re not listening to me. My father has to do very similar things in his business. There are dealers and manufacturers that are always giving him trouble. Cyclists who take drugs and get busted for that, sponsorships that my father has to cancel. This is the world of business, and you should accept that sometimes things need to be done—because one day you’ll inherit much more than the money. You’ll inherit the commitment, and that, I’m sure, is what your father wants. Maybe he’s trying to protect you from the dirty side of things, but business nowadays is not clean. It’s not.”
“You talk a lot today.”
“Only because I care.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.”
“So what if you’re right? What if your father is the cartel? And then they arrest him. What will you do?”
“Kill myself.”
“That’s not the answer, you know that. You’d go on because you’re a much stronger man than you know.”
Miguel took the digital recorder, opened a dresser drawer, and tossed it inside. “I don’t know what I am.”
She rolled her eyes at his gloomy tone and remark, glanced away, then faced him once more. “So next week you’ll start your summer job at Banorte. That’ll get your mind off all this.”
He sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Oh, just do it. We’ll move together to California in the fall, and everything will be perfect.”
“Now you sound almost sad about that.”
Her lips tightened. “I’ll just miss my family.”
He pulled her into his chest. “We’ll visit them as much as we can …” Miguel’s phone vibrated. “That’s a text from the kitchen. J.C. says the eggs are getting cold. Are you hungry?”
“Not really.”
“Neither am I. Let’s leave now. We’ll get some coffee on the road. I don’t feel like looking at my father right now.”
Gulfstream III
En Route to Mexico City
Moore and Towers sat aboard the twin-engine jet, going over the PDF file that contained the floor plans of Rojas’s mansion in Cuernavaca. The home was nearly eight thousand square feet, comprising two stories with a multilevel garage, a full basement, and stonework to make it resemble a sixteenth-century storybook castle built on a hillside overlooking the town. The residence had been featured in a magazine article in which Rojas’s late wife, Sofia (whose name was uncannily similar to that of Sonia, their agent), had taken the editors on a grand tour of the home and accompanying gardens. She had dubbed the place La Casa de la Eterna Primavera.
The Agency had been surveying the house with human spotters since the perimeter was equipped with bug detection, and, in fact, Towers and Moore had a detailed report on the number of Rojas’s security personnel, their positions, and further analysis of the home’s electronic surveillance and security equipment. Rojas owned several security companies in Mexico and in the United States, so it was safe to assume he protected his home with the best that money could buy: hidden cameras that operated on backup power and whose software could be “trained” to set off alarms based on electronic analysis of “interesting” objects, such as the silhouettes of people, animals, or anything else you taught the system to detect. He also had motion and sound sensors, lasers, interior and exterior bug sweepers, all part of a virtual catalog of detection equipment monitored by a guard seated in a well-protected basement bunker. The article included photos of Rojas’s antique furniture and book collections, which the author stated were carefully protected within home vaults. Moore concluded that those vaults were located in the basement.
Towers had already picked out a rear sundeck on the second story in the southwest corner of the house. Perfect entry onto the second floor. He double-tapped on that spot on his iPad’s screen and placed a blue pushpin icon there.
“He’s got an exit here from the main driveway,” Moore said, pointing at the screen. “And if he gets desperate, he can come out through that ramp in the garage and try to crash through the brick wall here …and here …There’s this secondary garage here. He could have a vehicle waiting there.”
Towers looked at Moore. “If he gets outside, then we should both retire.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Don’t say. That won’t happen on my watch.”
Moore smiled. “So, you never told me …How’d you get permission to come?”
“I didn’t. They think I’m back in San Diego.”
“You’re shitting me.”
He grinned. “I am. I’ve got a good boss. And he respects what I do. I’ve never lost so many people on one operation. I’m going to see this through to the end. Slater backed me up, too. He didn’t want you going in alone. Apparently, they like you.”
“I’m shocked.”
Towers cocked a bro
w. “I was, too. And by the way, the list Gómez gave us checked out. He’s named ten key players within the Federales, plus the assistant attorney general, and the minute we’re through with this operation, I’m pulling the trigger on that one. I don’t care if we have to arrest the entire force in Juárez. They’re all going down.”
“I’m with you, boss. At least now we’ll get to work with some real hard-core operators. These FES guys are awesome, and they throw a great party. I’m pretty happy we got an invitation.”
Moore was being coy, of course. Slater had relied on his own contacts and Moore’s experience as a Navy SEAL to hire the Fuerzas Especiales (FES), a special-operations unit of the Mexican Navy that was established in late 2001. Moore thought of them as Mexico’s version of Navy SEALs, and he had indeed spent four weeks training with them at Coronado not long after the group was formed. Their motto was simple: “Fuerza, espíritu, sabiduría”—force, spirit, wisdom. The group of nearly five hundred men grew out of the Marine Airborne Battalion of the 1990s. While their primary task was to carry out amphibious special operations, they were well trained to independently conduct nonconventional warfare in the air, sea, and land using all means available. They were experienced divers and parachutists, and were well versed in vertical descent, urban combat, and sniping. Like any good naval commandos, they also had a healthy interest in things that went boom. The group was divided into Pacific and Gulf units and participated in a fifty-three-week-long training program that left only the strong men standing. They’d already made significant contributions to the Mexican government’s war on drug traffickers through their well-planned and highly aggressive tactics, techniques, and procedures—the good old TTPs, as Moore knew them.
One of the FES’s more notable operations came on July 16, 2008, when they were operating off the southwest coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. FES teams rappelled from a helicopter onto the deck of a thirty-three-foot-long narco-submarine. They arrested four men and seized 5.8 tons of Colombian cocaine.
