Against All Enemies mm-1

by Tom Clancy

  Corrales looked odd.

  And Moore realized he’d screamed in English.

  “You are a fucking gringo! Who are you?”

  The whomping of that approaching helicopter, along with its lights, caught their attention — and the notice of the gunmen below, who switched fire on the bird as it thundered overhead, searchlight panning across the house. The pilot wheeled around and descended toward the backyard, where he had a wide-enough and level-enough swath of land to set down. There was no mistaking the bird’s insignia: POLICÍA FEDERAL, the words lit by the ricocheting rounds sparking off the fuselage.

  But were these Corrales’s allies come to pick him up? If so, Moore wasn’t sure he’d be welcome to tag along. He fished out his smartphone, checked the most recent message from Towers: I’m in the chopper. Get to it.

  That’ll work, Moore thought.

  “Aw fuck, look at that,” said Corrales, shifting his head to spot the helicopter. “It’s over. We’re all going to jail.”

  “No, those are my guys,” Moore told him.

  “You’re a gringo who works for the Federal Police?”

  “We’re just borrowing their ride. Stick with me. My deal with you is much better than the one you had with him. You’ll see.”

  Moore rose and shouted to the guys on the roof to cover them once more, but the guys told him to fuck himself and ran off, through the rooftop door and back into the house.

  As Moore helped Corrales to his feet and over to the ledge and the drainage pipe, muffled gunfire came from inside the house. Zúñiga’s men had been met by more Aztecas, no doubt, and it was safe to assume they’d lost that debate and that the Aztecas were coming up.

  “I can’t climb down that,” cried Corrales, the rotor wash whipping in their faces now, as the chopper was a few seconds from touching down.

  “GET DOWN THAT PIPE!” Moore screamed, summoning up a fiery tone from the past, echoing one of his own instructors from BUD/S. He repeated the command two more times.

  Shuddering, Corrales climbed over the parapet and set his shoe on the first support strap. The straps would serve as rungs of a ladder down, but admittedly, Moore wasn’t sure that Corrales, with his bad arm/shoulder, could make it.

  “No, no way,” said Corrales, trying to lower himself to the next rung.

  Moore screamed at him again.

  The rooftop door swung open.

  “GO!” Moore hollered, craning his head toward the banging door.

  Two Aztecas appeared, one armed with a rifle, the other with a machine gun.

  They didn’t see Moore at first, because all the rotor wash forced them to squint and Moore had dropped to his rump, shoved his back up against the parapet, and kept low, with the stock of the M16 jammed squarely into his shoulder. It really was a beautiful piece of steel and felt perfect in his hands. For just a few seconds, he was back in the SEALs, and Frank Carmichael was still alive.

  Then, either out of nervousness or gut instinct, he reached back, thumbed the selector to three-round bursts, and shifted his aim to the machine-gunner.

  The first triplet of fire kicked the bastard sideways, away from his buddy, who swung toward the sound of Moore’s weapon. That the Azteca had turned was his final mistake, as Moore now had a clear bead. All three rounds pierced the guy’s left breast. If he still had a heartbeat as he hit the ground, then you could chalk that up to a miracle.

  As Moore turned back to see how Corrales was doing, the dumbass kid lowered himself to the next support strap, lost his grip, and plunged the remaining ten feet to the ground. His feet struck hard, then he fell back, landing across Zúñiga and letting out a cry. Then he wailed in pain.

  Good. Dumbass was still alive.

  Two Federal Police officers from the chopper were already rushing over in full combat regalia, letting their Heckler & Koch MP5 nine-millimeter submachine guns lead the way. Moore shouted down to Corrales, “Go with them! Go with them!”

  He wasn’t sure if the kid heard him or had been knocked unconscious, but he wasn’t moving.

  The two cops dropped to the dirt as gunfire came from the corner, at least two muzzles flashing. Moore rose and rushed along the parapet to the corner of the roofline, looking directly down on the two Aztecas who’d pinned down the cops. They never knew what hit them — that is, until they were lying in pools of their own blood and staring up at the sentinel, who shifted away from the roofline. The last image they’d ever see.

  “You’re clear, go!” Moore shouted to the cops. Then he raced once more along the opposite edge of the roof, toward the garage doors, where he spotted three more Federal Police cars heading up the dirt road, with lights and sirens.

  “Hold it right there! Don’t move!” came a voice from behind him.

  He thought of turning his head slightly to identify his assailant, but then again, he already knew. The Aztecas weren’t taking prisoners, so they wouldn’t have ordered him to halt. And that voice …familiar?

  “Señor, I’m Federal Police, just like you,” Moore told the guy.

  The rifle was removed from Moore’s hands, as was the pistol from his waistband. Moore didn’t raise his hands. He just whirled around, surprising the guy, because no one in his right mind would make a sudden move like that, not with a weapon on him. The guy was neither Federal Police nor an Azteca.

  It was the young kid from the Range Rover, the one who’d said he’d hoped Zúñiga would let him live, the kid with the skull earring in his right lobe.

  “You brought this on us,” cried the kid. “I saw him down there. My boss is dead because of you!”

  In one fluid movement, Moore drove the heel of his hand up into the kid’s nose. An old myth persisted that you could kill a man this way. Nonsense. Moore had wanted only to stun the kid. Besides, his face was far too pretty for his own good, anyway. As the kid shifted back, about to scream, Moore wrenched back the rifle, then drove the stock into the kid’s head, knocking him to the roof. Sicario down for the count.

  Moore rushed back to the drainpipe, shouldered the rifle via the sling, then climbed over the parapet. He was about halfway down the pipe when the straps buckled under his weight and the whole damned pipe pulled away from the wall. Only a six-foot drop but enough to stun his legs as he hit the ground. No time for delays, though, as more Feds were pulling into the driveway. He rolled, rose, and with the needles still rushing up and down his thighs, he bounded for the chopper, reached the bay door, and was hauled inside by Towers. Corrales was already there, his eyes narrowed in pain. One of the officers slid shut the bay door, and the chopper’s nose pitched forward as they took off.

  Towers cupped his hand around Moore’s ear and said, “All I can say is, this kid had better be loaded with secrets.”

  Moore nodded. With Zúñiga dead, the Sinaloa Cartel’s operations would be disrupted — at least for a while, and they’d be vulnerable to further attacks and to a takeover by the Juárez Cartel. If that happened, then the joint task force’s mission to dismantle the Juárez Cartel would have not only failed but would’ve caused Rojas’s criminal empire to grow even stronger.

  37 TWO DESTINIES

  DEA Office of Diversion Control

  San Diego, California

  It was nearly eleven p.m. by the time they made it back to the diversion control office and took Corrales into the conference room. He’d already received attention from a medic onboard the chopper, who repeatedly assured him that he hadn’t broken both of his legs and that his right ankle was only sprained. He still had full range of motion. Moore and Towers told him they would get him to a hospital if he insisted, but he needed to talk first.

  Corrales had refused.

  And so they had decided to simply take him back to the office for some persuading. During the ride over, Moore had told Corrales the bad news. He and Towers were gringos all right, big badass gringos from the United States government. Corrales had demanded to know what agency.

  Moore had grinned darkly. “All of them.” />
  Now, as Corrales accepted a foam cup of coffee from Towers, he leaned forward on the table and rubbed his eyes. He uttered a string of curses, then said, “I want it in writing that I have total immunity. And I want a lawyer.”

  “You don’t need a lawyer,” said Moore.

  “I’m under arrest, right?”

  Moore shook his head, and his tone turned grave. “You’re here because of what happened to María. We found the body back at Zúñiga’s place. What happened? Did Pablo kill her?”

  “No, the other fucking bastards did. They killed my woman. They won’t survive that.”

  “Who’s your boss?” asked Moore.

  “Fernando Castillo.”

  Towers nodded emphatically. “Rojas’s security guy. He’s got a patch. One eye.”

  “They all like to pretend they are not part of the cartel. Los Caballeros. That’s bullshit!”

  “So what were you giving Zúñiga?”

  “I’ve got names and locations of suppliers and transporters from all around the world. People in Colombia, Pakistan …I got shit you stupid cops wouldn’t believe. I got bank account numbers, receipts, recordings of phone calls, e-mails; I got it all …”

  “Well, we got it all on you, too, Corrales. We know what happened to your parents and when you joined the sicarios,” said Towers. “So it’s not only about María. It’s about revenge for them, too, huh?”

  Corrales took another sip of his coffee, his breath growing shorter, then he slammed his fist on the table and cried, “They’re all going down! All of them! Every last one!”

  “They killed Ignacio at the hotel, too,” said Moore. “He was a nice guy. I liked him.”

  “Wait a minute. It’s you,” said Corrales, his eyes growing wider. “You’re the guy my boys lost. Your name’s Howard.”

  Moore shrugged. “Small world.”

  Corrales cursed and said, “Solar panels, my ass …”

  “So where’s all this information you claim to have?” asked Towers.

  “It’s all on a flash drive. And I’ve got two more copies in safe-deposit boxes. I’m not an idiot — so stop talking to me like I am.”

  Moore tried to hold back a chuckle. “Then we need to hit the bank, huh?”

  Corrales shook his head and reached down into his black silk shirt. He withdrew a wafer-thin flash drive that hung from a thick gold chain. The drive itself was gold-plated, made by “Super Talent,” 64 GB. “It’s all right here.”

  Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)

  Cell-Phone Waiting Lot

  9011 Airport Boulevard

  Samad and Niazi were in the Hyundai Accent and following Talwar, who was driving a DirecTV satellite van given to them by Rahmani’s men in Los Angeles. They followed the blue signs and pulled into the seventy-nine-space lot, which was located five minutes from the Central Terminal Area and accessible from the north and east via La Tijera, Sepulveda, Manchester, and Century Boulevards. They had considered using long-term parking lot C directly south and still within their launch radius, but they’d learned that at least two LAPD officers on motorcycles checked the cars daily with the intent of finding vehicles without front license plates so they could issue tickets. The only security in the cell-phone waiting lot was the “airport puppy patrol,” as one of Rahmani’s men had told them. Those guys checked only for unattended vehicles. No worries there, my friends.

  There’d also been some discussion about parking in Inglewood or Huntington Park, northeast of the airport, to avoid running any further security risks, but Samad had argued for the cell lot location, which would allow the team more time to acquire their target, as the plane would lift off, head out over the Pacific in a “Loop Five” departure as part of the airport’s noise abatement procedures, then return and be vectored along V-264, passing over their heads and on toward Inglewood and Huntington Park. It was clear to Rahmani and even American authorities that it was absolutely impossible to secure the ground beneath airplane flights, so the teams had free rein to select the best possible locations.

  Samad got the chills every time he thought about it. The absolute brilliance and audacity of the jihad on September 11, 2001, would return to American soil as promised, only this time Allah’s wrath would fall on Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix, Tucson, El Paso, and San Antonio.

  Six planes. Six airports. June sixth.

  While some of his Muslim colleagues disagreed, Samad firmly believed that 666 was the Qur’an. It was Allah. It was not Satan or the number of the beast, as many Christians believed. It was the perfect number.

  And so, too, should be the mission — perfectly executed, precisely timed, the planes carefully chosen after months of research and observation by Taliban and Al-Qaeda sleepers working inside and around each airport, all coordinated by Rahmani himself, who’d spent hundreds of hours downloading documents via the Internet, all readily accessible to him: FAA layouts of the airports, plane departure routes, everything freely and easily accessible by anyone with a connection to the Web. He’d enlisted the help of several computer engineers, who’d created three-dimensional models to simulate each of the six attacks, models that allowed him to plug in various launch coordinates and determine launch radii.

  With that data, and with the might of Allah fueling their hearts and minds, the destruction they wreaked would be simultaneous and complete.

  The target in Los Angeles was Delta Airlines flight 2965, departing on Sunday, June 6, at 5:40 p.m. for New York’s JFK airport. Equipment: Boeing 757 passenger plane, two engines, one on each wing. Wide-body large aircraft; 202 passengers, in addition to pilot, copilot, and attendants. The Sunday-night flights tended to be full, with many business folks and vacationers heading back east to be ready for work on Monday morning.

  The capabilities of the weapon had been the first consideration and had dictated both their target selection and location. The MK III missile’s guidance system was a dual-band infrared homing seeker, a “fire and forget” system that allowed the operator to launch even if he wasn’t pointing at the target. The MK III did more than just chase the target, though; it was a smart missile that would choose the shortest path, cruising at six hundred meters per second. Its warhead contained 1.42 kg of HE fragmentation that would thoroughly destroy the plane’s engine, which was mounted on a pylon under the wing but located fairly close to the fuselage. Residual damage to hydraulic lines, electrical systems, control surfaces, and fuel tanks could also occur — and those issues could result in a catastrophic failure.

  In November 2003 a DHL A300 was struck in the wing by a missile while taking off from Baghdad. The pilot was able to limp back to the airport, as only the wing had been hit. Samad felt certain that none of his teams would fail in that way, as the MK IIIs would most assuredly find the hottest heat source as the 757 ascended slowly on full power and with full fuel tanks. Not only were commercial airliners most vulnerable at that moment, but once struck, they would go down over heavily populated areas, allowing thousands of gallons of jet fuel to burn, causing maximum damage and loss of life.

  While the MK III’s range was 5,000 meters, or 16,400 feet, the goal was to be in a location to launch while the target was still below 10,000 feet. This not only increased the likelihood of a good hit but decreased the time the crew had to save the aircraft, which would roll from lift from the undamaged side toward the damaged side. Best-case scenario was that the engine would explode, shearing off the entire wing, in which case the plane and its crew were doomed from that second on.

  Indeed, all of these scenarios assumed that only one missile had been launched — when Samad and his teams had two MK IIIs, and the teams had every intention of launching both of their missiles.

  One driver. One shooter. One assistant to help reload the weapon. Total time to launch both missiles and get out of there: thirty seconds. Should anyone attempt to stop them after the first launch, the assistant was armed with two Makarov semiautomatic pistols, an AK-47, and six fragmentation grenades.
The driver was equally armed. A second car with a backup driver would be stationed just ahead of them.

  How could any of the citizens waiting in the cell-phone lot stop them? Most were probably armed only with cell phones and bad attitudes. Perhaps a couple of gangsters from South Central would be there, waiting to pick up one of their fellow thugs from Oakland or Chicago, but even so, they would drop quickly to the asphalt in a barrage of fire.

  Samad and his men could thank the United States government and the airlines for doing nothing to thwart their plans. Equipping all commercial airliners with military-style countermeasures, such as white-hot flares (chaff) and/or infrared jammers, high-powered lasers to burn out the seeker heads on missiles, or using fighter planes to escort jets in and out of the highest-risk areas, were all extremely cost-prohibitive in view of what government officials called a “lack of actionable intelligence.” The Federal Aviation Administration did state that the government provided some “war risk” insurance to the airlines, but they were unclear if the program accounted for surface-to-air missile strikes. Samad could only chuckle to himself. While five-year-olds were being patted down at airport security checkpoints, nothing — absolutely nothing — was being done to secure planes against such missile strikes.

  Allahu Akbar!

  The Israelis had not allowed themselves to be caught in the legal and political quagmire concerning this subject, in part because they knew they would forever have targets on their backs. They had equipped their El Al planes with sophisticated antimissile systems that had already proven themselves in one notable case of a 757–300 managing to evade not one but two missiles. The Israeli government denied that the plane was equipped with any countermeasures, although it was the same one often used by the Israeli prime minister.

  They drove toward the northeast end of the cell-phone lot. Their Hyundai had a wide-enough trunk to accommodate both the launcher and missiles if they were loaded at the correct angle. They pulled into a space where just ahead to the northwest lay the soccer and baseball fields of Carl E. Nielsen Youth Park. To their right stood a residential neighborhood that abutted the park. Samad got out and stood there, taking in the cooler night air.