by Mike Maden
Besides their intensive physical training, the new recruits spent the first few weeks in weapons training, learning not only how to fire the weapons, but also how to break down and reassemble their AK-47s, which the Mexicans called “goat horns” because of the shape of the magazine. The jungle echoed constantly with the roar of automatic-rifle fire, but no one in the area seemed to notice or care. Local law enforcement had been paid to look—or, technically, listen—the other way, and nobody was being shot. In fact, Victor’s presence had saved the local police from the other cartels that used to prey on them.
Once the trainers were convinced the campesinos wouldn’t accidentally shoot themselves, they introduced them to the basic principles of land navigation, small-unit tactics, and maneuvers. By the time Ali arrived, they had become an effective guerrilla unit.
Ali easily assumed command of the training unit. In his absence, Ali’s name had been invoked frequently by the trainers with a mixture of awe and terror, and they regaled the impressionable young men with tales of Ali’s heroic exploits against the Western armies in the Middle East. Ali also had a natural command presence, and the fearsome Quds Force soldiers carried out each of his orders with an instant precision that also greatly impressed the peasant recruits.
Under his command, Ali marched the boys twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, and frequently tested their combat skills. Ali also used this time to repeatedly drill into his recruits the mission they were assigned.
“Where are you going?” Ali sang in a marching cadence.
“We’re going up north!” the Mexicans shouted back.
“They put up a fight?”
“We burn ’em all down!” they called out in breathless unison.
“Where are you going?”
“We’re going up north!”
“I can’t hear you!”
“WE’RE GOING UP NORTH!”
Mile after mile, chant after chant, they marched and marched and marched.
One afternoon, Ali marched the Mexicans deeper into the jungle for some real fun: RPGs—rocket-propelled grenades.
“Only the top four recruits will have the honor of carrying one of these into battle,” Ali said, holding up one of the launchers. The Iranians manufactured their own RPGs, but they opted to smuggle in Vietnamese copies in the unlikely event any of the weapons were seized.
The Iranians strapped the wood-and-steel launchers to their backs along with the packs that held the long-stemmed charges. The big green bulbous warheads poked out of the top of the packs like misshapen bowling pins. The Iranians purposely marched in front of the Mexican recruits as a reminder of who was in charge, but also to keep the RPGs front and center in the peasants’ minds. The recruits laughed and nudged one another like schoolboys, lusting after the wicked-looking devices as if they were young women.
When they reached the prepared firing range, the Mexicans gathered around Ali as he cradled one of the weapons in his arms. The panting recruits broke out their canteens and drank as he spoke.
“You men are doing very well. I am very proud of you. So proud that I am going to let you in on a little secret. You are not just being trained to root out Castillo men up on the border. Any gangster with a pistol could do that. No, you have been selected for a very important mission by Victor Bravo himself. A mission all the way up north.” They listened earnestly, but their eyes were all locked on the launcher in Ali’s hands. He patted it. “But more of that later.”
Ali pulled out one of the big HEAT rounds and loaded it.
“Stand clear!”
The Iranians pushed the men aside, away from the coming rocket blast. Ali kneeled and lined up one of the large twisted ficus trees in his iron sights.
WHOOSH! Ali loosed the first rocket-propelled grenade. The armor-piercing round slammed into the tree, shattering the trunk and breaking the mighty tree in half. The top came crashing down to the jungle floor.
The Mexicans howled with delight.
“This is how David slays the giant, brothers. Who wants to go first?”
28
Tel Aviv, Israel
Nine days earlier, Pearce had asked Udi and Tamar to find the answers to two questions. The first was, who was Castillo calling from his bunker the night he died? The second was, who originally uploaded the massacre video and where did they upload it from?
Thanks to the Farsi clue Pearce passed on, Israeli intelligence had acquired the answers to both. As former Mossad agents, Udi and Tamar weren’t easily surprised, but the answers to the two questions knocked them back on their heels. What had Pearce gotten them into?
Udi picked up his phone and called Pearce. Unfortunately, it was 3:37 a.m. in Wyoming.
“This better be good,” Pearce grumbled, still half asleep.
“Castillo was calling Hernán Barraza.”
Pearce rubbed his tired face, processing. He sat up. “And he didn’t pick up. Why?”
“Maybe Barraza was scared? Surprised?” Udi said.
“Or cutting himself off from Castillo,” Tamar chimed in.
“My guess is the latter,” Pearce said. “But it doesn’t really matter. The big news is that this proves a direct link between Castillo and Hernán. Maybe even the president himself.”
Pearce headed for his kitchen, the cell phone still stuck in his ear. It was time to make coffee and get to work. “So how are you doing on the Facebook thing? I would’ve thought that would be the easier of the two nuts to crack.”
“I know. Crazy, eh? But whoever put that video up really knew his business. My friend says he’ll keep at it.”
“Any connection between the video upload and the Iranians?” Pearce asked.
“No. It was a dead end,” Udi said. “If we find out anything else, I’ll call.”
“Thanks, Udi. And thank your ‘friend’ for me. Shalom.”
“Shalom.” Udi hung up the phone.
Tamar scowled at Udi. “I hate that you lied to him.”
“Me? You were on the call, too.”
“You know what I mean,” Tamar said.
Udi sighed. “I hate it, too. But we owe more to Israel than to Troy.”
“That doesn’t make it right. He’s our friend.”
“I know. But we have our orders.”
“We don’t have ‘orders.’ We no longer belong to Mossad, remember?”
Pearce had recruited Udi and Tamar to his company on the condition that they leave Mossad and all other Israeli government employment. They had agreed to his terms because they wanted to work with him. But when Mossad hackers had chased Pearce’s lead straight into a Quds Force mainframe, they asked Tamar and Udi for help. Mossad was terribly shorthanded in Latin America, and the Sterns knew Mexico well. The former agents couldn’t say no to the request or to the possibility of breaking up a Quds Force cell in Mexico.
“This is the last time we’re going to lie to Troy, I promise,” Udi said.
Tamar shook her head. “You mean until after this mission?”
Peto, Mexico
It had been a good training cycle. His officers had performed a miracle, transforming young, illiterate peasants into combat-ready soldiers. When the campesinos had first arrived in camp six months earlier, few of them even owned a pair of shoes, let alone handled a weapon. Now they could fire a rifle and march in order, more or less, and they had learned to obey orders without question. More important, they shared the pride and camaraderie of all men-at-arms who sweat and bleed and suffer together.
They will be doing plenty more bleeding and suffering soon enough, Ali reminded himself. He was training these sheep for slaughter.
With his grueling regimen, Ali had forged them into a unit completely devoted to him. He’d proven to them that he could outshoot, outmarch, and outfight any man in the unit. His men wore their blistered feet and black eyes as evidence. But he also knew how to reward them, particularly on the last night of training camp.
Though it was against his Islamic convicti
ons, Ali allowed the recruits to partake of a particularly potent kilo of genetically modified marijuana. He also issued his men brand-new black fatigues.
They were all sitting together in a circle. One of Ali’s Quds Force trainers, Walid Zohar, a tough young Azeri sergeant, taught the Mexicans an old Iranian army song about love and loss, and the Mexicans in turn taught the Iranians a song about the hardship of the peasant’s life. The drug-fueled emotions ran high as the sun began to set. Ali signaled a technician to set up the video camera. When it was up and running, Ali barked his orders.
“Get your weapons now!”
Stunned—and stoned—the boys looked at one another and laughed. The dope had made them forget that they were supposed to be real soldiers now.
Ali fired his pistol into the air. BOOM!
That got their attention.
“Your weapons! Now!”
The Mexicans scrambled for their AK-47s stacked neatly near the tents, but they crashed and stumbled into one another, cursing and laughing, until all of them had picked up a rifle.
“Line up here!” Ali commanded, pointing to an imaginary line.
Sobering up quickly, the boys formed a line. The four stars of the group lined up in the center, each carrying an RPG and a grenade pack slung on their backs.
“Port, arms!”
The Mexicans slowly but accurately raised their guns diagonally across their bodies. Their bloodshot eyes narrowed with concentration.
Ali began the familiar cadence of the marching chants.
“Where are you going, Bravos?”
“We’re going up north!”
“They put up a fight?”
“We burn ’em all down!”
“I can’t hear you!”
“WE BURN ’EM ALL DOWN!”
Ali turned to another one of his officers, who picked up a rucksack and approached the Mexicans, passing out black balaclavas.
“Put those on. They make you look like warriors!”
The Mexicans pulled them on despite the stifling heat. They stole glances at one another and tried not to laugh. They thought they really looked badass now.
“Port, arms!”
The guns snapped to position faster than the first time.
Ali ran through the marching chants again and again. The video camera caught every shout, louder and angrier each time, as Ali drove them on.
Suddenly, Ali switched his cadence and began chanting in a low voice. “Bra-vos, Bra-VOS, BRA-VOS!”
The recruits mimicked him exactly until they were finally roaring out the name “BRA-VOS!” then they broke out in a spontaneous cheer. One of the Mexicans, completely caught up in the moment, racked a round in his weapon and opened fire. Seconds later, all twenty-four AKs roared into the air, blasting rounds until the mags emptied.
Everything was caught on camera even better than Ali could have hoped for. Lucky for the recruits. Had these been real Quds Force soldiers in the field, Ali would have pulled out his pistol and shot the first man in the face for breaking fire discipline. What he should do now is run them all for miles until they puked their guts out and dropped.
Instead, Ali marched them back to town for showers, beer, barbacoa, and whores. Their skills were minimal but sufficient for the task at hand. He had forged them into a unit loyal to him; a weapon that he could wield in his war in the north, against Victor Bravo’s wishes. But he couldn’t use them yet. Ali still needed a trigger. One that his computer-warfare specialist in Ramazan would soon help provide.
Mexico City, Mexico
They had taken every possible precaution.
Udi and Tamar arrived at the Benito Juárez International Airport in Mexico City under Canadian passports after a three-hour Aeromexico connecting flight from Havana. But the wearisome journey had begun in Tel Aviv twenty-six hours earlier. Flying Lufthansa to Frankfurt then Air France to London and Aeroflot from London to Havana had kept them off of the American fly lists, which was important, if for no other reason than Pearce had access to all of the DHS databases. They were under strict orders to keep Troy out of the loop. This was a Mossad operation only.
Udi drove the rental car while Tamar called ahead to their contact on a secured cell and arranged for the meet-up later that afternoon at their small, secluded hotel on Sierra Madre, a quiet, tree-lined suburban street not far from the Israeli embassy. That gave them six hours to shower, sleep, and fight off jet lag before Levi Wolf arrived with the guns.
What brought them back to Mexico had caught Mossad by surprise. After penetrating a dozen firewalls and chasing hijacked servers around the globe, they broke into the Quds Force mainframe in Ramazan, Iran, and made off with a file without being detected. When they finally cracked the file, Mossad discovered an agent code name and the location in Mexico City where the video had been uploaded from.
“Maybe we should have told Pearce after all,” Udi said. He knew how much Pearce hated the Quds Force and how he would have wanted to be in on the kill.
“Against orders, love. You wanted to tell him? You shouldn’t have asked for Menachem’s help,” Tamar said. Menachem was their direct superior in Mossad. “We were using his guys for the Facebook upload question and they found it, so now he wants those Quds scalps on his wall for himself.”
They showered together but they were both too tired to fool around. They weren’t scheduled to meet with Levi Wolf for another six hours. Tamar set her watch and Udi called down to the front desk for a wake-up call as a backup. They practically passed out. They’d need every brain cell activated for the snatch-and-grab operation.
29
The White House, Washington, D.C.
It was Roy Jackson’s first visit to the Oval Office. He was in awe of the room but tried not to show it as he summarized his latest intelligence briefing for Myers and Strasburg.
“Our analysts confirm that the bulk of the Castillo organization has already been absorbed into the Bravo organization. In our opinion, the Barraza administration will soon make an alliance with the Bravos, if they haven’t already done so,” Jackson concluded. “Initial reports are that drug-related violence is already in steep decline.”
“Congratulations, Madame President. Your decapitation strategy is an apparent success,” Strasburg said.
“Then why don’t I feel like celebrating?” Myers asked.
“Because you’ve helped create an unholy alliance. Churchill felt the same way about his partnership with Stalin during the war, but it was necessary in order to defeat Hitler. What matters is that you have achieved your objectives if Mr. Jackson’s report continues to hold true.”
Myers’s face soured. “It’s a nasty business, Karl. I don’t know how you’ve put up with it for so long.”
“It’s sausage making,” Strasburg said. “Blood sausage.”
“I just hope this really is the end,” Myers said.
Strasburg nodded, but said nothing. Hope wasn’t a word in his lexicon.
Mexico City, Mexico
Levi Wolf brought more than guns to the hotel that night. He’d recruited two of the embassy security staff for the operation as well. One was already at the location to keep an eye on things.
The stolen Quds file looked legit. Udi had forwarded it to Wolf before they arrived, and Wolf had staked out the location. There was only one Iranian who regularly occupied a warehouse in the barrio known as Tepito, famous for its boxers, crime, and poverty but especially for its tianguis—the open-air markets that sold everything from counterfeit Chinese software to seedless watermelons to black-market weapons, if you knew where to look.
Wolf was certain that the five of them could take down the lone Iranian. His man on the scene said he was there now. If the Iranian kept to his schedule, he’d be there for another two hours. Wolf reported that the Iranian looked more like a businessman than a soldier and appeared lightly armed, if at all. No one else had entered or left the warehouse in the last twenty-four hours.
After Wolf briefed Udi on the general lay
out, he turned the operation over to him. Udi had kicked down more doors than anyone else on the team and there was no time to lose. The idea was simple enough. Grab the Iranian alive and haul him back to the embassy for questioning. The trick was not getting killed doing it.
* * *
Tepito reminded Udi of the bazaars he’d been through all over the Middle East, Africa, and the Balkans. Places like Tepito formed a thin, permeable barrier that allowed commerce and crime to commingle without infecting the larger society as a whole. Tepito was a city on the edge of everything civilized. The kind of place where men and women racing through the streets with guns printing beneath their civilian shirts weren’t paid much attention to, much less bothered, especially at night.
Drenched in sweat, Udi and the team made their way to one of the back streets behind the markets to a row of crumbling warehouses. The men carried only pistols. Running through the streets with automatic rifles would draw unwanted attention, from either the police or the gangs that controlled this area. For overwatch duty, they gave Tamar the largest weapon in their arsenal, a 9mm Mini-Uzi machine pistol, just in case reinforcements did show up.
Udi couldn’t access Pearce’s drones without him knowing or use any of the other whizbang gadgets he often deployed. This operation would have to be old-school all the way. Udi even opted for hand signals rather than comms, just in case the Iranians were scanning for them.
Tamar climbed a shaky steel ladder and took her position on the roof across the street from the target warehouse. The Iranian’s big rolling steel door was shuttered tight with a rusted lock that looked like it had never been opened. A small entrance door fronted the main street, and a rear door opened to an alleyway. One of the security men was posted to the back alley exit, while Udi, Wolf, and the other security man approached the front.
After Tamar gave the all-clear sign, Udi and his men slipped quietly through the unlocked front door into the dim warehouse. There was an office with a large covered window and a closed door on a second-story landing. The Iranian’s shadow wandered back and forth across the drawn shade, hand to his head, as if he were on a phone call.
