by Tom Clancy
“Please, let me go.”
A hand fell on his cheek, and he finally mustered the strength to tilt his head back and look up. Gallagher’s wizened face came in and out of focus, and Rana realized they were not in a hotel room but in a cave somewhere, perhaps the Bajaur tribal area northwest of the hotel, and the blue and green he’d seen earlier were part of Gallagher’s tunic and trousers.
“All right, we will let you go, but first we’re going to ask you some questions about what you’ve been doing and what you and Moore have learned here in Pakistan. Do you understand? If you cooperate with us, you will go free. You will not be harmed.”
Every part of Rana’s being wanted to believe that, but Moore had told him that that was exactly what they’d say if he was ever captured. They would assure him freedom, make him talk, then kill him once they learned what they needed to know.
Rana realized with a chill that he was already dead.
And so young, too. Not even out of college. Never married. No children. So much of life waiting for him — but he would never arrive at that stop.
His parents would be heartbroken.
At that, he gritted his teeth and began to pant in anger.
“Rana, let’s make this easy,” said Gallagher.
He drew in a deep breath and spoke in English, using words that Moore had taught him: “Fuck you, Gallagher, you fucking traitor. You’re going to kill me anyway, so get on with it, you scumbag.”
“Some bravado now, but the torture will be long and terrible. And your friend, your hero Mr. Moore, has left you here to rot. You’re going to remain loyal to someone who has abandoned you? I want you to think about that, Rana. Think very carefully about that.”
Rana knew that Moore had not intentionally left Pakistan. He was called away, and that was the nature of his job as an operative. He’d mentioned that several times and had explained that other agents might contact him and that his relationship with the Agency was very important to them.
But Rana was not sure he could deal with the torture. He imagined them chopping off his fingers and toes, attaching battery cables to his genitalia, and pulling out his teeth. He imagined them cutting him, burning him, putting out one of his eyes, and allowing snakes to bite him. He saw himself lying in the dirt, hacked apart like a lamb, and bleeding until the cold consumed him.
He tugged against the bindings around his wrists and ankles.
His vision finally cleared. Gallagher stood there with the two Taliban lieutenants behind. One of the men clutched a large knife, while the other was leaning on a large metal pipe, using it as a cane of sorts.
“Look at me, Rana,” said Gallagher. “I promise you, if you tell us what we need to know, we’ll let you go.”
“Do you think I’m that stupid?”
Gallagher recoiled. “Do you think I’m that ruthless?”
“Fuck you.”
“All right, then. I’m sorry.” He glanced to the men. “You are going to cry like a baby, and you are going to tell us everything we want to know.” Gallagher gestured to the man with the knife. “Cut his bindings. And then we’ll start with his feet.”
Rana trembled. Held his breath. And yes, he wept like a child now.
The sheer panic came on in quakes throughout his chest and gut. Maybe if he did talk, if he did tell them everything, they would free him. No, they wouldn’t. But maybe they would? There was nothing left to believe. Now he shook so violently that he was about to vomit.
“Okay, okay, I will help you!” he screamed.
Gallagher leaned in closer and smiled darkly. “We knew you would …”
13 WHERE WE BELONG
Bonita Real Hotel
Juárez, Mexico
All of the high-tech devices in the world could not replace old-fashioned boots on the ground gathering Human Intelligence (HUMINT), and that, Moore often mused, had kept him gainfully employed all these years. When the engineers invented an android that could do everything he did, he might be forced to hang up his balaclava and turn in his spy card — because, in his humble opinion, the world would soon be coming to an end as the machines took over. An age-old theme in science fiction would become reality, and Moore would watch it all unfold in the grandstands, with, he prayed, a hot dog in one hand and a beer in the other.
However, he still marveled over all the highly encrypted data he could view on his smartphone. At the moment, he was watching real-time streaming satellite images of the hotel so that he could observe the comings and goings of everyone outside, even while tucked nicely into his bed, feet propped up, the TV morning news humming softly in the background. The spy satellites used to feed him that intelligence were operated by the National Reconnaissance Office (staffed by DoD and CIA personnel) and hung in low-earth orbits to optimize their resolution for several minutes before each handed off the job to the next satellite in line in a sophisticated relay of data transfer.
He was also receiving text alerts from the analysts back home who were watching the same images and could draw his attention to anything they noted. Other windows would show him the GPS locations of all other JTF members, and yet another window displayed more photographs of other targets in the city, such as cartel leader Zúñiga’s ranch house. Indeed, it was a complex and aggressive overwatch campaign by geeks sipping on lattes half a world away.
Moore had checked in to the hotel owned by Dante Corrales (noted by Towers as the most senior-ranking member of the cartel that authorities had identified thus far). Like all good drug pushers, Corrales was beginning to surround himself with legitimate businesses, but even so, mistakes would be made, money laundered, and the poor honest folks he did employ would either be implicated in his crimes or simply lose their jobs as his operations were shut down and he was arrested.
However, he would not be apprehended anytime soon. They needed him running wild in order to help identify the lord of the operation himself, and Corrales seemed like just the kind of loose cannon who could do that.
The bio they had on him was fragmentary, gleaned from street informants and personal documents they’d been able to obtain. That his parents had been killed in a hotel fire and he’d turned around and bought one was interesting. His hubris was well appreciated by the Agency and could be exploited. His penchant for showy cars and clothes made him ridiculously easy to spot around town. The guy probably had a Scarface poster hanging above his bed, and in some ways, he resembled a seventeen-year-old Moore — combative, full of bravado, with little sense of how the choices he made now would affect his future.
Moore rose, set down the phone, and pulled on a polo shirt and expensive slacks. His hair had been trimmed and pulled back into a ponytail, and his closely cropped beard was a far cry from the lobster bib he’d sported in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He’d donned a fake diamond earring to give him an edge. He picked up a leather briefcase and headed for the door. His Breitling Chronomat read 9:21 a.m.
He took the elevator down from his fourth-floor room to the first floor, and the man at the front desk whose badge read Ignacio gave him a polite nod.
Standing behind him was an absolutely stunning young woman with long, dark hair and vampire’s eyes. She wore a silver-and-brown dress, and a gold crucifix dangled down into her cleavage. Her perky boobs were enhanced, but they weren’t ridiculous porn-star water balloons, either.
Moore removed his smartphone, paused, pretended to check an e-mail, and snapped a silent if somewhat haphazard photo of the woman.
He frowned once more, thumbed to another page, then glanced up. The woman gave him a perfunctory grin, and he returned the smile and headed outside for his rental car. Once in the car, he forwarded the woman’s photo to the folks at Langley.
Fifteen minutes later, he met the real estate agent on the other side of town, but not before driving past a small tavern where several local police cars were lined up and officers were leading out several men in handcuffs. Early-morning bar bust in Juárez, go figure.
The real estate
agent was an obese woman with bright blue eye shadow and whiskers. She’d barely poured herself out of a rusting and dust-covered Kia coupe and shook his hand vigorously. “I have to be honest with you, Mr. Howard, these properties have been on the market for over two years and I haven’t received one call on them.”
Moore, aka Mr. Scott Howard, stood back to take in the view of two old manufacturing plants sitting beside each other on twenty acres of barren, dusty land, the buildings themselves looking as though they’d weathered several tornadoes, their graffiti-laden walls still standing but not much else. Between the stretches of broken glass and the gray haze that had permanently settled around the lots and spilled past the broken chain-link fence, Moore couldn’t help but grimace. He took out his phone and snapped a few pictures. And then he forced a broad grin and said, “Mrs. García, I appreciate you showing them to me. Like I told you on the phone, we’re scouting properties all over Mexico to build assembly plants for our solar panels. Our assembly plants will be here, while our administrative, engineering, and warehouse activities will remain in San Diego and El Paso. I’m looking for land just like this, with excellent access to the highways.”
Moore was simply referring to an operation known as a maquiladora, named after a U.S.-Mexican program allowing low duties on goods assembled in Mexico. Literally thousands of maquiladoras operated on both sides of the border.
In fact, Moore had had dinner with an old SEAL buddy who’d gone to work for GI (General Instruments), a telecom company. His buddy had become the general manager of GI’s maquiladoras, and when it was time to move raw materials from the United States to Mexico, he’d hit a snag. All goods for manufacturing had to originate from Mexico and could not be currently owned by GI. Moore’s buddy had devised a clever solution: He sold the goods to a third-party Mexican trucking firm that drove them into Mexico, and once there, he bought them back at cost plus mordita (a bribe), as goods originating in Mexico. To quote his buddy, “Mexico runs on mordita.” The memory of that dinner had helped Moore devise his initial cover while in Juárez.
As the real estate agent smiled, Moore looked past her at the two punks parked across the street. They were shadowing him, and that was fine. He would not have expected anything less. He only wondered if they were from the Juárez or Sinaloa cartels.
Or worse…they could be Guatemalans. Avenging Vultures …
Moore raised his brows. “I think this land would work out perfectly, and I’d like to meet with the owner to discuss his price.”
The woman winced. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, why?” Moore tempered his curiosity because he already knew why: The land was owned by Zúñiga, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel.
“The owner is a very private man, and he travels a lot as well. All of this would be handled through his attorneys.”
Moore made a face. “That’s not the way I like to do business.”
“I understand,” she said. “But he is a very busy man. It is rare when I can get him on the phone.”
“Well, I hope you will try. And I hope he will make an exception in my case. Tell him it’ll be well worth his time and money. Now here …” Moore reached into his briefcase and withdrew a portfolio filled with marketing materials regarding his fictitious company. Embedded in the portfolio was a wafer-thin GPS beacon. Moore hoped she’d actually give the materials to Zúñiga and that he would actually follow up and check out his company, only to realize it was fake.
You didn’t just walk up to a cartel leader’s front door, ring the bell, and ask if he’d like to cut a deal. You would never get that meeting. You had to “inspire” his curiosity first, make him become so curious, in fact, that he’d demand to see you. This was a game Moore had played many times with warlords in Afghanistan.
“Here, please share this with the owner.”
“Mr. Howard, I’ll do my best, but I can’t make any promises. I hope that no matter what happens, you’ll seriously consider this land. Like you said, it’s perfect for your new operation.”
She’d barely finished her sales pitch when automatic-weapons fire echoed in the distance. Another volley split the morning silence, followed by a police siren.
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.
