Against All Enemies mm-1

by Tom Clancy

  “I was?”

  “I have to go. You won’t see me ever again.” She tossed him his cell phone. “Take care, Miguel.”

  “Sonia?”

  She started toward the door with the two men.

  “Sonia, what the fuck is this?”

  She didn’t look back.

  “SONIA, DON’T LEAVE! YOU CAN’T LEAVE!”

  One of the men turned back and pointed a finger. “You stay here,” he warned. “Until after we’ve left.”

  He shut the door after himself, leaving Miguel standing there, in shock, as his mind rewound through everything Sonia had ever said to him, through the millions of lies.

  41 IMPACT

  Gulfstream III

  En Route to San Diego, California

  0230 Local Time

  The agency wanted Moore and Sonia out of there immediately, and Towers received the same directive from his BORTAC senior administrators. While the operation had been a success, Soto, along with seven of his men, had been killed. The Black Hawk pilots and crew chiefs were also lost. Terrible news, but these were men who had known the risks and accepted them.

  Sonia was a bit shaken when they’d picked her up at the hotel, but within five minutes she was talking rapidly and thanking Moore for saving her back in San Juan Chamula.

  “And yes,” she said, “I do owe you coffee.”

  “And I will collect,” he said with a wink.

  Once on the plane, she folded her arms over her chest and buried herself in her seat, losing herself in her smartphone. Moore appreciated the sacrifices she had made, giving all of herself to Miguel in order to get close to Rojas, a man who had so well protected himself that her mission had become nearly impossible. She was young, though remarkably professional, having understood the ramifications of what she was doing and the toll it would take on her emotions. Her level of commitment had never wavered, and early on, she had seen that her mission could lead to familial collateral damage: Rojas had condemned his son to years of investigations and probes. Who was going to believe that Miguel Rojas didn’t know what his father was doing? Sonia could not come to his aid. There was no way the CIA would compromise itself and allow her to testify in any court, open or closed. She might be allowed to testify in a “closed” session before a congressional intelligence committee, but that would never help Miguel. She knew this, knew the full extent of her betrayal. Her strength thoroughly impressed Moore.

  Towers had allowed the Mexican medics to bandage him up, and they’d stopped the bleeding, but as soon as he and Moore arrived in San Diego, he was going to the hospital for some additional care. He needed X-rays, an MRI, and stitches, since the exit wound on his shoulder was not pretty, but he insisted on having that work done back in San Diego. And so he was resting easy at Moore’s side.

  For his part, Moore had only a few bruises on his chest, new additions to a collection that had been growing since the start of the operation. With his computer balanced on his lap, he watched the Mexican news coverage of the raid on Rojas’s mansion and snickered over how the media billed it as the “shocking discovery of a secret life led by one of the world’s wealthiest men.” As they’d planned, the Mexican Navy was given credit for the raid with no mention of American assistance. Moore couldn’t believe it, but the Mexican authorities had already allowed the media to get footage of the vaults. The walls of money were long gone, having already been “taken care of” by the FES troops. The Mexican government was no doubt torn between being grateful and being furious over a rogue FES mission that had received no clearance from anyone but had turned into a remarkable find and a great public-relations story of the Mexican president’s war on drugs.

  Meanwhile, the Associated Press had picked up another story, of a government raid on the jungle warehouse of Juan Ramón Ballesteros, reputed leader of one of Colombia’s most productive and profitable cocaine cartels, with direct ties to the Juárez Cartel of Mexico (as revealed to them earlier by Dante Corrales). Ballesteros had, quite surprisingly, been captured alive, and Moore accessed a CIA report to learn that fellow agents had been the ones leading the raid on Ballesteros’s camp. Hooyah. Another small battle won.

  True to his word, Towers handed over the name of every corrupt Federal Police officer that Gómez had given them, twenty-two names in all, including a surprising if not depressing revelation: The secretary of public security in the federal cabinet was also on Rojas’s payroll. The names were not only delivered to the Federal Police but deliberately leaked to the media and e-mailed to the president of Mexico himself. Rioting of the kind that Gloria Vega had described outside the Delicias station would soon occur all over Juárez and in cities throughout Mexico, as local officers demanded the ousting of their corrupt bosses. Towers had said he wanted to force the issue, and, oh, yes, they were forcing it, all right. Gómez, who believed he was getting a plea bargain, would be extradited to the United States to face conspiracy-to-murder charges and everything else the attorneys could throw at him. Small battle number two won …

  Turncoat sicario Dante Corrales was going to be placed in the witness protection program as he continued to name names and help tear apart the cartel. His intel regarding the cartel’s connections in Afghanistan and Pakistan was, however, dated, with the leads he’d given them on Rahmani’s whereabouts yesterday’s news, according to Moore’s colleagues operating in the region. Moore had already sent a text message to Wazir to see if he’d learned anything more about the Hand of Fatima pendant and the group of Taliban that Moore so firmly believed had entered the United States. The Agency still had no leads on Gallagher’s whereabouts (he’d obviously had his shoulder beacon surgically removed), although he had been identified as the man who’d hired the kid to paint the police cars. As a field agent, Gallagher had been trained to find people who didn’t want to be found and was an expert at dropping off the grid himself. Over the years, he’d studied all the different methods people used to conceal themselves — and he’d learned which ones had worked and which had not. Finding him would cost money, time, assets, and, Moore contended, a feverish obsession.

  Sometime later, Moore fell asleep and was awakened by the single attendant who asked that he sit up and fasten his seat belt.

  San Diego, California

  0405 Local Time

  Once on the ground, Sonia said she was catching another flight back to Langley, where she’d be debriefed by her people.

  “You did a great job,” Moore told her. “I mean it.”

  She smiled tightly. “Thank you.”

  Moore drove Towers over to Sharp Memorial Hospital, a level 1 trauma center. When the nurses learned that Towers was a law enforcement officer, they treated him like royalty, and he was seen by a doctor within ten minutes. They told Moore their timing was fortunate. In a few hours, all of the rush-hour car accident victims would begin pouring in — just another day at a trauma center in a big city.

  While seated in the waiting room, Moore read an e-mail from Slater’s assistant, who said they were hoping to schedule a video conference later in the day. Moore had already spoken at length with his bosses during the plane ride back.

  As he was about to doze off yet again, a gunshot echoed as though through mountains. Moore cursed and shuddered awake. That wasn’t a gunshot, but his phone was vibrating: a call from Wazir. Moore rose and stepped out of the waiting room and into the hallway. “How are you, my friend?”

  “I know it is early there, but I had to call. I thought I would leave you a message.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Some of the informants your men recruited have brought trouble. Another drone launched missiles yesterday, killing one of my best sources of information. You need to stop this.”

  “I’ll make a call as soon as we’re finished.”

  “I can’t help you if you don’t help me. Your agency is directing the strikes on the people I need most.”

  “Wazir, I understand that.”

  “Good.”

&nbs
p; “Do you have anything for me?”

  “Bad news. A group of seventeen men entered the United States through a tunnel between Mexicali and Calexico, just as you feared. Samad, the man who is Rahmani’s fist, is with them, along with two of his lieutenants, Talwar and Niazi. Samad has been known to wear the Hand of Fatima.”

  Moore balled his hand into a fist and held back the curses. “I need everything you can get on those men, all seventeen of them. And I need to know where Samad and Rahmani are …right now.”

  “I’m already working on that. Rahmani is here, but he keeps moving, and as I said, it’s getting very dangerous for me. Stop the drone attacks. Tell your people to back off so I can work for you.”

  “I will.”

  Moore immediately called Slater, who was en route to his office. Moore conveyed what Wazir had said and added, “I need you to stop the drone attacks. Let ’em run recon, but no bombing. Not now.”

  “I need actionable intel.”

  “You won’t get it if you kill my sources. I just got confirmation. Samad’s already here. He’s got a team. Gallagher helped him.”

  “I’ll get with DHS and see if they’re willing to step up some operations and raise the terror alert status.”

  Specific government activities related to specific threat levels were not fully revealed to the public, and often the Agency was not made aware of every other department’s activities (no surprise there), given that deep-cover operations like Sonia’s were not disclosed to the rest of the Agency itself. Certain measures had already been challenged in court as being illegal, and the courts had yet to rule on many of those issues, even as the current system suffered accusations of being politically manipulated (threat levels being raised before elections, et cetera).

  Moore thanked Slater, then added, “It’s imperative now that we hold fire, all right? My guy Wazir is a good man, the best guy I’ve got. He’ll help us find these bastards. Just hold fire.”

  Slater hesitated at first, then said, “Keep me informed on how Towers is doing. I’ve got a full plate today, but I’ll talk to you later.”

  7-Eleven Convenience Store

  Near San Diego International Airport

  Kashif Aslam, a forty-one-year-old Pakistani immigrant, dreamed of one day owning his own 7-Eleven, but for now he managed the store on Reynard Way, barely a mile from the airport. By popular demand from a small group of Pakistanis living in the immediate area, Aslam started selling pakoras, a Pakistani finger-food snack consisting of potato or onion or cauliflower deep-fried in a chickpea batter. Each morning his wife would get up early to make the batter, alternating between the potato, onion, and cauliflower, and Aslam would bring the pakoras to work and complete the fritters in the store’s deep fryer. The snacks were such a success that the owner began paying Aslam for all the supplies and for his wife’s labor.

  After six years of managing the same location, Aslam was very familiar with all of his local customers, especially his fellow Pakistanis. Just before noon, three strangers in their early twenties had come in and rejoiced over the fritters. They were all countrymen, who had spoken in Urdu and had cleaned him out of every last pakora. Of course they had roused his curiosity. Aslam had asked them how they’d heard about him and the snacks, and they said that they had a friend who worked at the airport, but they had, oddly enough, been unable to give him a name, saying it was another friend who’d made contact. That could very well be true, but there was something troublesome about these men, their nervous reaction when he’d asked, their unwillingness to discuss how long they’d been in the country and exactly where they were from in Pakistan. Aslam decided to eavesdrop on their conversation outside the store, where they’d stood, eating heartily. He pretended to be taking out the trash, walking around the back toward the big Dumpster, when he’d heard one of them talking about flight numbers and flight patterns.

  Aslam was a true believer in America; the country had been very good to him, his wife, and their six daughters. He did not want any trouble, and, more important, he did not want anything to interfere with his new life and promising future.

  While he couldn’t prove anything, Aslam thought the men might be criminals — smugglers perhaps — or in the country illegally, and he did not want the authorities to associate him or the store in any way with them. He did not want them coming back. They were driving a dark red Nissan compact car, and Aslam had been careful to record their tag number. After they’d left, he’d called the police and reported the incident to one of two officers who had come to take his statement. Then, thirty minutes later, a man who identified himself as Peter Zarick, an FBI agent, arrived to interview him. He said they would follow up on the tag number and assured him that he would not be associated with them in any way.

  “What happens now?” he asked the man before he left.

  “My boss will pass this information on to all the other agencies.”

  “That’s very good,” said Aslam. “Because I don’t want any trouble for anyone.”

  FBI Agent Peter Zarick got in his car and drove away from the 7-Eleven. When he got back to the field office, he’d turn in his 302 report to Meyers, the special agent in charge, who would fax it to Virginia, to the National Counterterrorism Center. The NCTC hosted three daily secure video teleconferences (SVTCs) and maintained constant voice and electronic contact with major intelligence and counterterrorism community players and foreign partners.

  Ever since that BOLO (Be On the Lookout) alert had gone out for terrorists in Calexico, and the field office had learned that a fellow agent, Michael Ansara, had been killed, Zarick had been working his tail off, canvassing the area for any leads — and this was the first good one they had. He could barely contain himself when he reached the Field Intelligence Group Office on Aero Drive. He charged out of his car and ran.

  DEA Office of Diversion Control

  San Diego, California

  By two p.m. Moore and Towers had left the hospital and returned to the conference room. Towers was feeling great after having his shoulder and arm treated. The GSW (gunshot wound) had appeared a lot worse than it actually was, and the doctor had spent some time telling Towers just how lucky he’d been, that he could have had a collapsed lung and so on. They wanted to give him a sling, but he’d refused. Moore had been around many operators who’d been shot, and sometimes even the meanest badasses turned into crying thumb-suckers when they were injured, but Towers was a tough and obviously thick-skinned bastard. He’d wanted no sympathy or special treatment, only a chicken sandwich with french fries, so they’d hit the drive-thru of a KFC. Moore had ordered the same, and while they ate, they watched CNN to see if it had picked up anything else on the Rojas story. At the same time, Moore scanned the intel gathered thus far on the hunt for Samad and his group. The trail ended abruptly at the Calexico airport. They’d checked all the records of all the flights from all the airports within the range of a variety of aircraft. It was needle-in-a-haystack time, and as Towers had pointed out, the FAA had docs for only about two-thirds of all small planes. Witnesses were few and far between, and even if the group had been sighted, Moore figured they’d disguised themselves as migrant workers, who were a common sight and always on the move.

  Part of Moore wanted to believe that Samad and his group were just sleepers, that their mission was to live secretly in the United States for years until they would be called into action, and that would give him and the Agency the time they needed for the hunt …and the kill. He could reassure himself with that, but in the next thought he’d imagine what they’d been carrying in those rectangular packs: rifles, RPGs, missile launchers, and, God forbid, nukes? Of course, the Agency’s analysts — in conjunction with more than a dozen other agencies, including DHS, NEST (the Nuclear Emergency Support Team), the FBI, and Interpol — were scouring the planet for evidence of recent arms sales, especially between the Taliban in Waziristan and the Pakistan Army. After dozens of false leads, the trail in that regard had gone cold, and Moore sudden
ly cursed aloud.

  “Take it easy, bro,” Towers said. He reached into his breast pocket and produced a plastic prescription bottle. “You want a painkiller?”

  Moore just gave him a look.

  At about 4:45 p.m., Moore received an e-mail that took him aback. Maqsud Kayani, the commander of that Pakistan patrol boat and nephew of the late Colonel Saadat Khodai, had written to share some important information he’d been given via an ISI agent who’d been a friend of his uncle’s. The ISI had recently questioned a group of Taliban sympathizers up in Waziristan, one of whom revealed that his brother was on some kind of mission in the United States. The more ironic or perhaps fateful part of the e-mail followed:

  The brother was in San Diego.

  I want you to know that my uncle was a brave man who understood exactly what he was doing, and I’m hoping this information will help you catch the men who murdered him.

  Moore shared the e-mail with Towers, who nearly fell out of his chair as he spotted something on his own computer screen. “We got a good lead from the Bureau, right here on the 302. Three guys at a 7-Eleven, all from Pakistan. Guy who reported them was from Pakistan, too. He got a tag number.”

  “They run it?”

  “Yeah, came from a rental car place near the airport. Guy who took it fits the description of any one of the 7-Eleven guys. Looks like his ID was fake, though, and so was his address — whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on now. Holy shit.”

  “What?” Moore demanded.

  “Airport security just called. They spotted the car in the cell-phone lot on North Harbor. They have orders not to approach.”

  Moore burst to his feet. “Let’s go!”

  They were out the door in seconds, practically leaping into their SUV, with Moore at the wheel and Towers on his cell phone, talking to a guy named Meyers at the Bureau who already had his Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) unit en route.