Against All Enemies Read online

  AGAINST ALL ENEMIES

  ALSO BY TOM CLANCY

  FICTION

  The Hunt for Red October

  Red Storm Rising

  Patriot Games

  The Cardinal of the Kremlin

  Clear and Present Danger

  The Sum of All Fears

  Without Remorse

  Debt of Honor

  Executive Orders

  Rainbow Six

  The Bear and the Dragon

  Red Rabbit

  The Teeth of the Tiger

  Dead or Alive

  NONFICTION

  Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship

  Armored Cav: A Guided Tour Inside an Armored Cavalry Regiment

  Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing

  Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit

  Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force

  Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier

  Into the Storm: A Study in Command with General Fred Franks, Jr. (Ret.) and Tony Koltz

  Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign with General Chuck Horner (Ret.) and Tony Koltz

  Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces with General Carl Stiner (Ret.) and Tony Koltz

  AGAINST ALL ENEMIES

  TOM CLANCY with PETER TELEP

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  NEW YORK

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  PUBLISHERS SINCE 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) • Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi–110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2011 by Rubicon, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Clancy, Tom, date.

  Against all enemies / Tom Clancy; with Peter Telep.

  p. cm.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-53687-2

  I. Telep, Peter, date. II. Title.

  PS3553.L245A73 2011

  2011012458

  813'.54—dc22

  BOOK DESIGN BY AMANDA DEWEY

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the authors have made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the authors assume any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  WE THINK AL-QAEDA IS BAD, BUT THEY’VE GOT NOTHING ON THE CARTELS.

  —unidentified senior FBI agent, El Paso, Texas

  EVERYONE HAS A PRICE. THE IMPORTANT THING IS TO FIND OUT WHAT IT IS.

  —Pablo Escobar

  IN MEXICO YOU HAVE DEATH VERY CLOSE. THAT’S TRUE FOR ALL HUMAN BEINGS BECAUSE IT’S A PART OF LIFE, BUT IN MEXICO, DEATH CAN BE FOUND IN MANY THINGS.

  —Gael García Bernal

  AGAINST ALL ENEMIES

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1 DECISIONS

  2 MOVEMENT

  3 FERTILE GROUND

  4 THE GOOD SONS

  5 FATHER FIGURE

  6 VERSE OF THE SWORD

  7 TRAVEL PLANS

  8 JORGE’S SHADOW

  9 CONFIANZA

  10 INDOC AND BUD/S

  11 JOINT TASK FORCE JUÁREZ

  12 ALLIES AND ENEMIES

  13 WHERE WE BELONG

  14 A SANGRE FRÍA

  15 THE BUILDER AND THE MULE

  16 BACKSEAT DRIVER

  17 SOME HAVE MONEY AND GUNS

  18 THE SLEEPING DOG

  19 NEW ALLIANCES

  20 DIVERSIONS

  21 BULLETPROOF

  22 TAKING THE FALL

  23 BUITRES JUSTICIEROS

  24 HE THAT DIES PAYS ALL DEBTS

  25 IF I RETREAT, KILL ME

  26 ATTEMPTS

  27 AL RESCATE

  28 INSOMNIO

  29 THE ONLY EASY DAY

  30 DEAR LADY

  31 RITES OF PASSAGE

  32 PAWNS IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN

  33 HE MUST NEVER LEARN ABOUT THE CARTEL

  34 THE HAND OF FATIMA

  35 REVELATIONS AND RESERVE

  36 ZONA DE GUERRA

  37 TWO DESTINIES

  38 BY INVITATION ONLY

  39 THE FIRE IN THEIR HANDS

  40 CHANGE OF PLANS

  41 IMPACT

  42 DEVASTATION

  43 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

  44 COLD-TRAILING

  45 THE WATER WAS THEIR HOME

  EPILOGUE

  Prologue

  RENDEZVOUS FOXTROT

  0215 Hours, Arabian Sea

  5 Miles South of the Indus River

  Coast of Pakistan

  A DARKENED SHIP is a burdened ship, Moore thought as he stood outside the pilothouse of the OSA-1 fast attack craft Quwwat. She was indigenously built by the Karachi Shipyard and Engineering Works and based on an old Soviet design, complete with four HY-2 surface-to-surface missiles and two twin 25-millimeter antiaircraft guns. Three diesel engines and three shafts propelled the 130-foot-long patrol boat at thirty knots across waves tinged silver by a quarter-moon shimmering low on the horizon. Running at “darken ship” meant no range or masthead lights, no port or starboard running lights. International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS) dictated that were an incident to occur, Quwwat would be at fault regardless of the circumstances.

  Earlier in the evening, at dusk, Moore had walked down a Karachi pier with Sublieutenant Syed Mallaah, trailed by four enlisted men, a SPECOPS team from the Pakistan Special Service Group Navy (SSGN), an organization similar to the U.S. Navy SEALs, but, ahem, their operators were hardly as capable. Once aboard the Quwwat, Moore had insisted on a quick tour that ended with a cursory introduction to the commanding officer, Lieutenant Maqsud Kayani, who was distracted as he issued orders to leave port. The CO couldn’t have been much older than Moore, who was thirty-five himself, but the comparisons stopped there. Moore’s broad shoulders stood in sharp juxtaposition to Kayani’s lean cycler’s physique that barely tented up his uniform. The lieutenant had a hooked nose, and if he’d shaved in the past week, there was no clear evidence. Despite his rugged appearance, he had the twenty-eight-man crew’s utmost attention and respect. He spoke. They jumped. Kayani eventually gave Moore a firm handshake and said, “Welcome aboard, Mr. Fredrickson.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. I appreciate your a
ssistance.”

  “Of course.”

  They spoke in Urdu, Pakistan’s national language, which Moore had found easier to learn than Dari, Pashto, or Arabic. He’d been identified as “Greg Fredrickson,” an American, to these Pakistani naval men, although his darker features, thick beard, and long, black hair now pulled into a ponytail allowed him to pass for an Afghan, Pakistani, or Arab if he so desired.

  Lieutenant Kayani went on: “Have no worries, sir. I plan to arrive at our destination promptly, if not early. This boat’s name means prowess, and she’s every bit of that.”

  “Outstanding.”

  Point Foxtrot, the rendezvous zone, lay three miles off the Pakistan coast and just outside the Indus River delta. There, they would meet with the Indian patrol boat Agray to accept a prisoner. The Indian government had agreed to turn over a recently captured Taliban commander, Akhter Adam, a man they claimed was a High-Value Target with operational intelligence on Taliban forces located along the southern line of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The Indians believed that Adam had not yet alerted his own forces of his capture; he had simply gone missing for twenty-four hours. Still, time was of the essence. Both governments wanted to ensure that the Taliban was not tipped off that Adam had fallen into American hands. Therefore, no American military assets or forces were being used in the transfer operation—except a certain CIA paramilitary operations officer named Maxwell Steven Moore.

  Admittedly, Moore had misgivings about using a security team of SSGN guys led by a young, inexperienced sublieutenant; however, during the briefing he’d been told that Mallaah, a local boy from Thatta in Sindh Province, was fiercely loyal, trusted, and highly respected. In Moore’s book, loyalty, trust, and respect were earned, and they would see if the young sublieutenant was up for the challenge. Mallaah’s job was, after all, rudimentary: oversee the transfer and help protect Moore and the prisoner.

  Assuming that Akhter Adam made it safely aboard, Moore would begin interrogating him during the trip back to the Karachi pier. For his part, Moore would use that time to determine if the commander was indeed an HVT worthy of serious CIA attention or somebody to leave behind for the Pakistanis to play with.

  Forward of the port beam, the blackness was pierced by three quick white flashes from the Turshian Mouth lighthouse guarding the entrance to the Indus River. The sequence repeated every twenty seconds. Farther east, nearer the bow, Moore picked up the single white flash from the Kajhar Creek light, and that flash repeated every twelve seconds. The sealed-beam revolving beacon of the often-disputed Kajhar Creek (aka the Sir Creek light) was situated on the Pakistan-India border. Moore had taken special note of the lighthouse names, locations, and their identifying flash sequences from the navigational charts rolled out during the briefing. Old SEAL habits died hard.

  With moonset at 0220 and fifty percent cloud cover, he anticipated pitch-black conditions for the 0300 rendezvous. The Indians were running at darken ship, too. In a pinch the Turshian Mouth and Kajhar Creek lighthouses would keep him oriented.

  Lieutenant Kayani held true to his word. They reached Point Foxtrot at 0250 hours, and Moore shifted around the pilothouse to the only available night-vision scope mounted on the port side. Kayani was already there, manning the scope. Meanwhile, Mallaah and his team waited on the main deck, midships, to haul the prisoner across once the Indian vessel came alongside.

  Kayani backed away from the night scope and offered it to Moore. Despite the gathering clouds, starlight provided sufficient photons to bathe the Indian Pauk-class patrol boat in a green eerie twilight, bright enough to expose the numerals 36 painted on her hull. Approaching bows-on, at twice the weight of the Quwwat, the five-hundred-ton Agray carried eight GRAIL surface-to-air missiles and dual RBU-1200 ASW rocket launchers up on her bow. Each ten-tube system was capable of deploying decoys and ASW rockets for surface-to-surface and antisubmarine warfare operations. The Quwwat felt diminutive in her presence.

  As the Agray began to drift down the port side and prepared to come about to make her approach, Moore spotted her name painted in black letters across the stern, rising above the mist agitated by the bow wash. He then glanced through the pilothouse door out to the starboard bridge wing and caught a short-long, short-long light flash. He tried to remember which lighthouse used that light sequence. The Agray completed her turn, and Kayani was now busy leaning over the port side, directing the placement of fenders to minimize any hull damage once the two ships came together.

  The flashes came again: short-long, short-long.

  Lighthouse, my ass, Moore thought. ALPHA-ALPHA was International Morse Code for, in practical terms, “Who the hell are you?”

  A chill spiked up Moore’s spine. “Lieutenant, we’re getting an ALPHA-ALPHA on the starboard side. We’re being challenged!”

  Kayani charged across the pilothouse to the starboard wing, and Moore hustled up behind him. How many times had they already been challenged? They were in Pakistan territorial waters; what were Pakistan’s rules of engagement?

  A flare burst overhead, peeling back the night and drawing deep shadows across the decks of both patrol boats. Moore looked across the sea and saw it, a thousand meters out, rising up out of the waves, a nightmare with imposing black sail and dull black decks fully awash as she breached, her bow pointed at them. The commander had brought the sub to the surface to challenge them, then had fired the flare to visually confirm his target.

  Kayani lifted the pair of binoculars dangling around his neck and zoomed in. “It’s the Shushhuk! She’s one of ours. She’s supposed to be back at the pier!”

  Moore’s chest tightened. What the hell was a Pakistan Navy submarine doing in his rendezvous zone?

  He craned his head to the Agray, where he assumed that by now the Taliban prisoner was on deck. According to the plan, Adam was wearing a black jumpsuit and turban, and his wrists were bound. His escorts were supposed to be two heavily armed MARCOS, or marine commandos, of the Indian Navy. Moore spun back to face the submarine—

  And then, suddenly, he saw it—a line of phosphorescence bubbling up in the water and streaking past their stern, heading toward the Agray.

  He pointed. “TORPEDO!”

  In the next breath, Moore came up behind Kayani, shoved him over the side, then jumped himself as the torpedo struck the Agray in a horrific explosion whose thundering and flashing was as surreal as it was shockingly close. A blast wave of debris pinged off the Quwwat’s hull and rained down to strike the water in dozens of splashes.

  Moore’s eyes widened as the steaming, hissing sea came up at them, heated now by all the white-hot shards of hull and deck and torpedo that continued to blast off the Agray. As he hit the water, narrowly missing a jagged piece of steel, a ball of flames set off the Agray’s GRAIL surface-to-air missiles and both clusters of ASW rockets on her fo’c’sle.

  Moore sank below the waves, his shoes colliding with something below. He swam back to the surface and jerked his head around, searching for the lieutenant. There he was, just out of reach.

  Suddenly, three of the Agray’s ASW rockets blew up into the Silkworm missile housings aboard the Quwwat. The resulting detonations boomed so loudly and brightly that Moore reflexively ducked back under the water for cover. He swam toward the lieutenant, who was floating supine and appeared only semiconscious, his face bloody from a deep gash along the left side of his head. He must’ve struck some debris as he’d entered the water. Moore surfaced at the man’s shoulder. He splashed salt water onto the gash as Kayani stared vaguely at him. “Lieutenant! Come on!”

  Thirty meters away, the sea surface was aflame with burning diesel fuel. The stench left Moore grimacing as for the first time he felt the deep rumble of nearby diesel engines …the submarine. He had some time. The sub wouldn’t approach the wreckage until the flames subsided.

  Other men were in the water, barely visible, their shouts punctuated by more explosions. A strangled cry resounded nearby. Moore scanned the area for their Taliban pr
isoner, but the twin thunderclaps of another detonation sent him back under the waves. When he came up and turned back, the Quwwat was already listing badly to port, getting ready to sink. The Agray’s bow was entirely submerged, the fires and deep black smoke still raging, ammunition cooking off with sharp cracks and half-muffled booms. The air grew clogged with a haze that reeked of burning rubber and plastic.

  Willing himself into a state of calm as the heat of the fires pressed on his face, Moore removed his shoes, tied the laces together, then draped them around his neck. Three miles to the beach …but right now, this low in the water, he had no idea where the beach was. With the exception of the flames, everywhere he looked was inky black, and each time he glanced toward the conflagration, his night vision was ruined.