Against All Enemies mm-1 Read online

  “Is that right?”

  “Yeah,” spat the punk. “It is.”

  Corrales walked up to the man, studied him, then asked, “Let me see your gun.”

  The kid frowned but handed it to Corrales, who abruptly stepped back and shot the asshole in the foot. He gave a bloodcurdling cry, and the other three punks visibly trembled. One pissed his pants.

  The two guys they had captured started crying as Corrales whirled to face them and groaned, “Shut up.” Then he shot each man in the head.

  The impact wrenched them back, and they fell, lifeless, onto the dust-caked ground.

  Corrales sighed. “All right, let’s get to work.”

  He faced the kid he’d shot in the foot. “It’s too bad you have so much attitude. We could’ve used you.”

  Corrales raised the pistol, answered by the kid raising his hand and screaming. The gunshot silenced that terrible noise, and Corrales took another deep breath and raised his brows at the others. “Five minutes.”

  They drove immediately to Zúñiga’s place, reached the front gates, and were about to be accosted by two security men who were approaching. Corrales’s remaining recruits dragged the bodies of the captured men and dumped them near the gate. Then Corrales hit the gas and drove back down the dirt road, only to slow a moment as the guards called in backup, and four men opened the gates and shifted out to examine the bodies.

  Corrales watched them from the rearview mirror, and once they were in close enough, he lifted the remote detonator and thumbed the button.

  His men began hollering as the explosion shook the ground, blew off the front gates, and swallowed the security guys in a fireball that rose like a mushroom cloud.

  “We told him to keep his men away from the border, or things would get worse,” Corrales said, for the benefit of his group. “You see what happens? He doesn’t pay attention. Maybe now he will wake up …”

  At the bottom of the hill, a dark sedan approached, and Corrales slowed, then stopped beside the car, lowering his darkly tinted window. The other driver did likewise, and Corrales smiled at the leonine man with gray hair and thick mustache who was just lowering a walkie-talkie.

  “Dante, I thought we had an agreement.”

  “I’m sorry, Alberto, but you broke your promise, too.” Corrales tilted his head back toward the rising smoke on the mountainside. “We caught two more trying to blow one of our tunnels, and they had to be dealt with. You promised me you would help keep them away.”

  “This I did not know.”

  “Well, that’s a problem. Are your men too afraid to help now? Are they?”

  “No. I’ll look into this.”

  “I hope so.”

  Alberto sighed in frustration. “Look, when you do this, you make it very difficult for me.”

  “I know, but this is something that will pass.”

  “You always say that.”

  “It’s always true.”

  “All right. Go now, before the other units arrive. How many this time?”

  “Only two.”

  “Okay …”

  Corrales nodded and floored it, kicking up dust in their wake.

  Alberto Gómez was an inspector with the Mexican Federal Police with more than twenty-five years of service. For nearly twenty of those years he had been on the payroll of one cartel or another, and as he neared retirement, Corrales had witnessed him grow more cranky and annoyingly cautious. The inspector’s usefulness was drawing to an end, but for now Corrales would use the man because he continued to recruit others within his ranks. The Federal Police would help them finally crush the Sinaloa Cartel. It was good public relations for them and good business for the cartel.

  “What are we doing now?” asked Pablo.

  Corrales looked at him. “A drink to celebrate.”

  “Can I ask you something?” Raúl began, nervously stroking his thin beard in the backseat.

  “What now?” Corrales fired back with a groan.

  “You shot that guy. He might’ve been a good man. He had attitude. But we all did — especially in the beginning. Is something bothering you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, are you, I don’t know …mad about something?”

  “You think I’m taking out some anger on these punks?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Let me tell you something, Raúl. I’m only twenty-four years old, but even I can see it. These punks today lack the respect that our fathers had, the respect that we should still have.”

  “But you told us that there weren’t any more lines, that everyone was fair game: mothers, children, everyone. You said we had to hit them as hard as they hit us.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, then, I guess I’m confused.”

  “Just shut up, Raúl!” Pablo told him. “You’re an idiot. He’s saying we have to respect our elders and each other, but not our enemies, right, Dante?”

  “We have to respect how deadly our enemies can be.”

  “And that means we have to rip their hearts out and shove them down their throats,” said Pablo. “See?”

  “That guy could’ve been useful,” said Raúl. “That’s all I’m saying. We could’ve used a punk with a big mouth.”

  “A guy like you?” Corrales asked Raúl.

  “No, sir.”

  Corrales studied Raúl in the rearview mirror. His eyes had grown glassy, and he kept flicking his gaze toward the window, as though he wanted to escape.

  Now Corrales lifted his voice. “Raúl, I’ll tell you something …a guy like that cannot be trusted. If he mouths off to his boss, you know he’s always thinking about himself first.”

  Raúl nodded.

  And Corrales let his statement hang. The punk he’d shot was indeed a lot like him—

  Because he, too, could not be trusted. He would never forget that while he worked for this cartel, his parents’ blood was still on their hands.

  10 INDOC AND BUD/S

  Naval Special Warfare Center

  Coronado, California

  On a cold night in October 1994, Maxwell Steven Moore was lying on his bunk in the special warfare barracks, a few seconds away from becoming a quitter at a place where men never said “quit.” In fact, if the word took root in your psyche, then you weren’t a Navy SEAL in the first place. Getting through BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training would forever change the eighteen-year-old’s life. It had meant everything to him.

  But he couldn’t go on.

  The journey had started nearly two months prior when he’d arrived at the Naval Special Warfare Center to begin the INDOC course. The class’s proctor, the leather-faced Jack Killian, whose eyes were too narrow to read and whose shoulders seemed molded into a singular piece of muscle, had addressed Moore’s class with an oft-heard question at Coronado: “So I heard you boys want to be Frogmen?”

  “Hooyah!” they responded in unison.

  “Well, you’ll have to get through me first. Drop!”

  Moore and the rest of class 198, some 123 candidates in all, hit the beach and began their push-ups. Since they were still only candidates, they were not yet permitted to exercise on the hallowed blacktop square of the BUD/S “grinder,” where only those who’d made it through INDOC could perform their calisthenics and other assorted forms of physical torture that were part of BUD/S training First Phase — seven weeks designed to test a man’s physical conditioning, water competency, commitment to teamwork, and mental tenacity. No man would begin First Phase without passing the two-week-long INDOC course. The initial endurance test included the following:

  • A five-hundred-yard swim using breaststroke and/or sidestroke in less than twelve minutes and thirty seconds

  • A minimum of forty-two push-ups in two minutes

  • A minimum of fifty sit-ups in two minutes

  • A minimum of six dead-hang pull-ups (no time limit)

  • A run for 1.5 miles wearing long pants and boots in less th
an eleven minutes

  While Moore’s upper-body strength still needed work, he excelled in both the swim and the run, routinely beating his classmates by wide margins. It was during this time that Moore was introduced to the concept of a “swim buddy” and the tenet that you never leave your swim buddy alone and that no man, alive or dead, is ever left behind. “You will never be alone. Ever,” Killian had told them. “If you ever leave your swim buddy, the punishment will be severe. Severe!”

  Moore’s swim buddy was Frank Carmichael, a sandy-haired, blue-eyed kid easily mistaken for a surfer dude. He had an easy grin and spoke in a laid-back cadence that had Moore doubting this guy could ever become a SEAL. Carmichael had grown up in San Diego and had traveled a similar path to INDOC as Moore had, going to boot camp, then being recommended for the SEAL program. He said he wished he’d gone to Annapolis and become a member of the Canoe Club, the nickname given to the Naval Academy, but he’d goofed off too much at Morse High School and his grades weren’t competitive enough for admission. He hadn’t even bothered getting into JROTC. There were a number of other candidates who were officers — Annapolis graduates, guys who’d come out of Officer Candidate School as O-1 ensigns, and even those who’d served in the fleet for a while. BUD/S, however, leveled the playing field — every candidate had to pass the same tests, no special treatment for officers.

  Moore and Carmichael hit it off immediately, middle-class guys who were trying to do something extraordinary with their lives. They suffered together through the four-mile beach runs they had to complete in less than thirty-two minutes. Killian seemed to punctuate every command with the phrase “Get wet and sandy.” The entire class would rush down into the freezing surf, come out, roll around in the sand, then, standing there like mummies, like the undead, they’d be sent into their next evolution. They learned immediately that you ran everywhere, including a mile each way to the chow hall.

  This was 1994, the year Time magazine described the Internet as a “strange new world.” Moore griped that today’s candidates could get on the Web and learn ten times as much about their upcoming training than Moore could back in those days. Today’s crop could review websites dedicated to BUD/S, watch streaming videos and slickly produced Discovery Channel specials. All Moore and his buddies had had were the tall tales passed on from previous classes, the rumors and warnings about the unspeakable horrors to come posted on a few newsgroups. Hyperbole? In some cases, yes, but Moore and Carmichael had faced their challenges with hardly as much preparation as the current group did.

  Of all the training evolutions they went through during INDOC, Moore enjoyed the swimming work the most. They taught him how to kick, stroke, and glide, and to, above all, make the water his home. This was where the SEALs excelled over other branches of the service. The intel they gathered by being stealthy in the water assisted Marines and many other combatants. He learned to tie complex naval knots while submerged and did not panic when his hands were bound behind his back during the drown-proofing test. He relaxed, swam up to the surface, took his breath, came back down, and repeated the process, while several members of the Canoe Club near him freaked out and DORed right there. Moore’s reaction to that was to demonstrate just the opposite to his instructors, who were floating around him in their scuba gear, waiting for him to panic. He lowered himself to the bottom of the pool and held his breath—

  For nearly five minutes.

  One instructor came up to him with bug eyes enlarged by his mask and motioned for Moore to get back to the surface. He smiled, waited a few seconds more, then swam up and took his breath. He’d learned to increase his anaerobic tolerance by doing running and swim sprints, and he’d felt certain he could hold his breath even longer than that.

  Killian learned of the “stunt,” and warned Moore not to try that again. But he’d winked when he’d said it.

  The underwater fifty-meter swim proved interesting for many guys. Killian concluded his description of the test with the following: “And don’t worry — when you pass out, we will revive you.” But Moore did the fifty meters and then some, gliding through the water as though he’d always belonged there, a Frogman through and through. Carmichael told him that even a few of the instructors had cursed in awe.

  Moore’s natural gifts had been discovered by Mr. Loengard when Moore was just sixteen. Loengard was not only a high school gym teacher but also an avid cyclist. He asked Moore to take a test on a cycle ergometer and found that Moore had a VO2 max of 88.0, which was comparable to many world-class athletes. Moore’s resting heart rate was barely 40 bpm. His body could transport and use oxygen much more efficiently than the average person’s, and this, said Loengard, was a genetic gift that made him a very lucky individual. And that’s when Loengard began to talk to Moore about the military, specifically the SEALs. Ironically, the man had never been in the Navy himself, nor had any of his relatives. He simply admired and respected military personnel and their commitment to the country.

  When Moore and his INDOC classmates weren’t in the pool, they were back to the beach, the surf, the grit in every orifice of his body. Even the high-pressure, ice-cold showers back at the barracks could not wash out all the sand. The Navy wanted him and the others to literally become one with the beach and the Pacific.

  With Carmichael always at his side, they would lie on their backs, legs out, toes pointed, and perform dozens of flutter kicks without allowing their feet to touch the beach. The goal was to move their legs up and down about eight to twelve inches. Everything they did as SEALs would require strong abdominal muscles, and Killian, along with his fellow instructors, had an obsessive-compulsive fascination with exercises like the flutter kick that turned Moore’s abs into rails of steel. He continued to work on his upper body as well, because Killian kept warning him about week number two, but he wouldn’t say what they’d face.

  By the end of the first week, sixteen guys had already dropped from the class. They seemed to have just packed their bags in the middle of the night and left. Moore and Carmichael had not seen them and barely discussed the DORs in an effort to remain strong and positive.

  It was 0500 on the first day of the second week that class 198 bade a resigned hello to the O-course, or obstacle course, a gauntlet through hell designed by evil-minded men to welcome others into their most private and elite club.

  Twenty obstacles labeled with signs had been erected on the beach, and as Moore’s gaze panned over them, each contraption appeared more complicated and challenging than the last. Killian approached Moore and Carmichael. “You gentlemen have twelve minutes to get through my O-course.”

  “Hooyah!” they cried. Moore took off in the lead, running toward the first obstacle, the parallel bars. He hoisted himself up and used his hands to walk across the steel, his shoulders and triceps on fire by the time he hit the sand on the other side. Already out of breath, he made a quick right turn, lifted his arms over his head, and hopped his way through the truck tires (about five wide, ten deep) and toward the low wall. There were two ascending stumps he used — right foot, left foot — then with a groan he launched himself onto the top of the wooden wall and swung himself over the side, hitting the sand much harder than he’d thought he would. With his ankle stinging, he jogged over to the high wall, maybe twelve feet, but it could have been fifty at this point. He seized one of the ropes and began to haul himself up, the rope digging sharply into his palms.

  At the course’s start, Killian was barking orders and/or corrections, but it was hard to hear him. Moore’s breath and drumming heart led him over to the concertina wire lying across a series of logs, beneath which were two long furrows. He plunged into the first ditch on his left and crawled on his hands and knees beneath the wire. For just a second he thought his shirt had caught on one of the barbs, but it was just hung up on the wood. With a sigh of relief, he finished breaching the obstacle, got to his feet, and muttered an Oh, shit.

  The cargo net was fastened between two poles that rose to at least f
orty feet. Moore immediately determined that the net would be more stable near the pole, as opposed to in the middle, so he mounted it near the pole and began his rapid ascent.

  “You got it, buddy,” Carmichael said, coming up just behind him.

  Looking down was a mistake, as he realized there were no safety measures, and as he came over the top, he began to grow dizzy. He couldn’t wait to get to the bottom, and he began to rush down the net. And that’s when he missed a rung, slipped, and plunged a half-dozen feet until he miraculously caught hold and broke his descent. The entire class had gasped at that, then hooyahed as he recovered and reached the bottom.

  He and Carmichael charged doggedly toward the next bit of fun, the balance logs. The name said it all. If they fell off, Killian would make them work off the mistake in push-ups. Moore tensed and glided across the first log, made a short left turn, then headed back on a straight course down the next one, dumbfounded that he didn’t actually fall. Carmichael was right on his heels as they hit the hooyah logs, an obstacle made of six logs stacked and bound in a pyramid. With palms clasped behind their heads, they ran up and over the pyramid, then crossed over to the transfer rope. At this point, Moore’s cardio endurance was still holding up strong, but Carmichael’s breath was nearly gone, his heart rate clearly in the red zone.

  “We got this; come on,” he urged his buddy, then took up the first rope, climbed about six feet, then swung over, caught a metal rung with one hand, released the first rope, and then swung himself again to transfer to the second rope. Down he went. Carmichael took an extra swing to reach the rung, but he made it nonetheless.

  The next challenge was referred to by the sign as the Dirty Name, and one look at it told Moore why: It comprised three n-shaped structures made of logs, two shorter n’s sitting side by side so that two lines of candidates could tackle the obstacle at the same time. The longer, taller n-shaped barrier stood in the back. Moore ran to the log seated before the n, leapt onto the first log, and pulled himself up. Then he stood on that one and leapt across to the taller one to repeat the process, swinging around by hooking his legs over the log. The impact on the second log made him utter the notorious dirty name, as did the impact as he hit the dirt.