Against All Enemies Page 16

  Moore’s Spanish was excellent, although his knowledge of gang and cartel slang was admittedly lacking. He would, indeed, have to brush up on them. He answered in Spanish: “No worries, vato. I know what I need to do.”

  Fitzpatrick, who went by the nickname Flexxx, reached across the table and made a fist, three of his fingers sporting thick gold rings. He banged fists with Moore, then settled back into his seat.

  Gloria Vega glanced over at Moore and asked in Spanish, “Take a shower lately?”

  “Yeah, but …yeah …I’m still jet-lagging.”

  She rolled her eyes and faced the projector screen being lowered by Towers.

  Moore squinted at the intelligence photograph of two young Hispanic males.

  “I assume you’ve all seen this?” asked Towers.

  “Yeah,” Moore began, hoping to demonstrate to the others that he wasn’t a total slacker. “The guy on the left is Dante Corrales. He’s the leader of the cartel’s enforcer gang. They call themselves The Gentlemen, if I recall. The guy on the right is Pablo Gutiérrez. He killed an FBI agent in Calexico. Mr. Ansara would like to get his hands on him.”

  “You have no idea,” said Ansara, with a hiss of anger.

  Towers nodded. “Our boy Corrales is a very clever young man, but he keeps hitting the Sinaloas head-on. We don’t think his superiors approve of this.”

  “Why?” asked Moore.

  Towers looked to Fitzpatrick, who cleared his throat and said, “Because of Escuadrón de la Muerte, the Guatemalan death squads. They’re back in action after a two-year hiatus. They’ve reorganized, and they’re killing members of Guatemala City’s meth labs and maritime exporting ops out of Puerto Barrios and Santo Tomás de Castilla in the Caribbean. They’ve also taken out cartel members at the Port of San José and Port of Champerico on the Pacific side.”

  “And let me guess, they’re only hitting the other cartels. The Juárez Cartel has not been touched.”

  “Exactly,” said Towers. “So if they want to terrorize the Sinaloas, why not use Los Buitres Justicieros? That’s what their most prolific hit team is calling themselves …the Avenging Vultures.”

  “And we think at least a dozen of their members are now in Juárez,” said Fitzpatrick. “If you think the regular sicarios are hard-core, these guys are insane.”

  “Sounds like a powder keg,” said Moore.

  “Torres and Zúñiga know these guys are in town, and they’re concerned,” said Fitzpatrick. “There’s talk of hitting the Juárez guys again, but Zúñiga’s more concerned about securing a tunnel, and he’s unwilling to pay the Juárez Cartel for the rights to use one of theirs.”

  “Why doesn’t he dig one of his own?” asked Vega.

  Fitzpatrick snorted. “He’s tried. And every time Corrales and his boys come down and kill everyone. They have a lot more money than we do. They’ve got spotters everywhere. A huge network. Corrales has also paid off most of the engineers in town, so they’ll never work for Zúñiga. That little bastard has got the whole place locked up.”

  Towers pointed at the photograph. “All right, our problem is this. Corrales is, at this moment, the highest-ranking member of the cartel we’ve identified, and in this case old-school conventional wisdom holds true: If we can identify and take out the leader, in most cases the cartel will fall. These are complex and sophisticated operations, and they’re not run by dummies. I’d daresay it takes a freaking genius to pull off some of the stuff they do. Whoever our guy is, he’s masked himself awfully well, and his organization has become the single most aggressive cartel in Mexico.”

  “Persons of interest?” asked Moore.

  “Not many,” said Towers. “We’ve investigated the mayor, chief of police, even the governor. You know less-educated guys like Zúñiga keep a higher profile, which satisfies their egos, but this guy is extremely well insulated.”

  Towers brought up a color-coded flow chart representing the various facets of the Juárez Cartel’s operations. He continued, “The bottom line is this—we need to identify links the Juárez Cartel might have to terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to meth and coke labs in Colombia and Guatemala, and we need to positively link them to their gun-smuggling operations in the U.S. We also need to identify and attempt to expose the cartel’s contacts within the local and Federal Police forces. That’s phase one. Phase two is simple—we take ’em out.”

  Ansara began to shake his head. “We have a lot of homework. And I hate homework.”

  “Question,” Moore began. “Has Zúñiga ever been openly approached about helping to bring down the Juárez guys? Maybe he knows who’s running their operation.”

  “Whoa, hold on there, dude,” Towers said, raising a palm. “You’re talking about the United States government entering into a partnership with a Mexican drug cartel.”

  Moore beamed. “Absolutely.”

  “Sounds like business as usual,” said Vega. “We get in bed with one devil to take out another.”

  “Are you being sarcastic?” Moore asked her.

  “You have a keen eye for the obvious. You’re right. It doesn’t thrill me.”

  “Well, it’s not pretty, but it works.”

  “I have to assume we wouldn’t get authorization to do that,” said Towers. “You’ll be able to recruit informants from both cartels, but I warn you those people don’t usually live very long.”

  Moore nodded. “I’ve got a few ideas. And Fitzpatrick, I’ll need you to keep your ear to the ground. Any sign of Middle Eastern activity, Arabs, what have you, and I need to know about it.”

  “None so far, but you got it. And if you’ve read my report, you know I haven’t met Zúñiga yet, so I can’t tell you if he knows who’s running the cartel. I’ve asked Luis, but he doesn’t know.”

  “Okay,” answered Moore.

  Since Fitzpatrick had already done an excellent job of penetrating and reconnoitering the Sinaloa Cartel, he took over for a few minutes, describing that cartel’s operation, its assets, and its desire to usurp the Juárez Cartel and its stranglehold on the more desirable border crossing areas. But this was information already contained within his report, and he was embellishing as he went.

  “Mr. Moore, we don’t know much about your ops in Pakistan,” said Towers, after Fitzpatrick had taken his seat. “They’ve given us the file on Tito Llamas, the guy who turned up in a trunk in Pakistan.”

  “I saw that,” answered Moore. “He’s our first link. The cartel’s buying more opium from Afghanistan, but we’re not sure why Llamas was sent there. His death might’ve put a dent in their relationship.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “I can’t imagine any cartel willing to let terrorists cross the border into the United States,” said Vega. “Why would you let them kill all your best customers and risk massive retaliation from the U.S.?”

  “What about Zúñiga?” Moore asked, turning to Fitzpatrick. “You think he might want to help Taliban guys get through, just to hurt the Juárez Cartel?”

  “No way. From what Luis has said, this has been discussed at length. I don’t think any member of any cartel would aid or abet known terrorists. It’d have to be an independent coyote group, guys just in it for a quick score. Something like that. But the cartels have a good handle on those guides. They usually don’t make a move without the cartel knowing about it.”

  “Well, then, I can go home,” said Moore with a slight grin. “Because the cartels are protecting our borders from terrorist threats so we can keep buying their drugs.”

  “Whoa, slow down there, dude,” said Towers, grinning over the irony. “So the cartels might not willingly help, but the Taliban or Al-Qaeda could enter by force.”

  Fitzpatrick sighed in frustration. “All I can say is they’d better bring some big guns—because every time the Sinaloas get into it with the Juárez guys, we always lose.”

  “Don’t kid yourselves. The terrorists are already here. They’re all around us. Sleeper cells are just waiting
to strike,” said Vega.

  “She’s right,” said Fitzpatrick.

  “Oh, happy day,” said Moore, with a grunt.

  “All right, people, we’ll take it one step at a time. I’ve got some big assets to call in if we need them; otherwise, our limited size and scope is what gives us the advantage. Ansara, we’ll start you off in Calexico. See if you can win over some mules for our team. Agents at the checkpoint there confiscated nearly one million dollars’ worth of coke and marijuana just last week. The cartel hid the stuff in a secret compartment built into the dash, probably the most sophisticated thing we’ve seen. You needed a remote and an access code to open the secret panel. Pretty amazing stuff. They even wrapped the drugs in a layer of hot sauce to try to throw off the dogs. That’s the level of sophistication we’re dealing with here. Vega, you’re going in deep. You know the drill. Flexxx, you just get back home to Zúñiga. Whittaker, you’re heading back home to Minnesota. And that just leaves you, Mr. Moore.”

  He grinned. “Let’s lock and load. Next stop: Mexico.”

  ALLIES AND ENEMIES

  Aéroport Paris–Charles de Gaulle

  Terminal 1

  AHMAD LEGHARI was a member of the Punjabi Taliban, and he was scheduled to meet up with Mullah Abdul Samad in Colombia. Leghari was twenty-six and dressed in conservative slacks, a silk shirt, and a light jacket. He had one carry-on backpack and had already checked through one other suitcase. He carried nothing suspicious in his luggage. His credentials had been in order, and no one had confronted him thus far. The woman at the check-in desk had actually been friendly and had tolerated his rudimentary French, even after he’d been warned about the airport’s reputation for overworked and rude employees. Moreover, there was no reason to believe he was on America’s no-fly list. His confidence in this regard was justified. The list of roughly nine thousand names was publicly criticized as costly, riddled with false positives, and easily defeated. Numerous children, many under five and some under one, appeared on the list. Conversely, the list had failed to detect terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the NWA flight 253 bomber, and Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square car bomber, in a timely manner. The most notable false positive was the late Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy. The listing “T. Kennedy” caused the politician considerable inconvenience and aggravation when flying. The fact that “Ted” was a nickname, not the senator’s real name, didn’t seem to matter. Kennedy finally got relief by going directly to the director of Homeland Security, an option not available to the average citizen, and a fact publicly noted by the senator himself.

  How people got on the list was supposed to be a closely guarded secret, with only pieces of information revealed during American congressional hearings. However, the Taliban had pieced together a working analysis of how some of their people wound up on that list. A first step might be having law enforcement or an intelligence agent glean information and submit it to the National Counterterrorism Center in Virginia, nicknamed Liberty Crossing, where it was entered into a classified database known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE). That information was then data-mined to connect dots and hunt for names and identities. If that process yielded more results, then the intelligence would be passed on to the Terrorist Screening Center, also in Virginia, for more analysis. Each day more than three hundred names were sent to the center. If, at that point, a suspect’s information caused a “reasonable suspicion,” he might wind up on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist used by airport security personnel to add extra screening for some travelers, but yes, he could still fly. The Taliban had discovered that in order for someone to get on the actual no-fly list, authorities had to have their full names, their ages, and information that they were a threat to aviation or national security. While the Taliban couldn’t confirm it, they’d heard that the final decision for adding a name to the list rested with six administrators from the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA). Even if placed on the no-fly list, some suspects were still permitted to travel with escorts, and unless wanted for a specific crime, many on the list who attempted to fly were simply stopped at the gate, quarantined, questioned, and ultimately released.

  Suspects might also be placed on the “selectee list,” which automatically had them passing through extra screening measures if they met certain criteria that might include booking a one-way flight, paying cash for tickets, making reservations on the same day as their flight, and flying without an ID.

  Leghari had been training for this trip for nearly nine months, memorizing the layout of the terminal, considering what people would say to him and how he would react. He’d spent the better part of his life in Dera Ghazi Khan, a poverty-stricken frontier town in the Punjab Province with a growing phalanx of hard-line religious schools.

  His parents were veterans of Pakistan’s state-sponsored insurgency against Indian forces in Kashmir until pressure from the United States forced then-president Pervez Musharraf to withdraw support for the Punjabi group. His parents were forced to flee to the tribal areas, where they deepened their ties with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Leghari was left behind with relatives.

  This, more than anything else, drove the embittered boy to the local madrassa led by Muhammad Ismail Gul, a recruiting center for the banned Punjabi Lashkar-i-Jhangvi Taliban group.

  Leghari took a deep breath and stepped into the hexagonal-shaped millimeter wave full-body scanner. The airport had been testing the controversial technology for months on all passengers of United States–bound flights but had more recently broadened its scope of use. Leghari was instructed to raise his arms, then moving plates simultaneously beamed extremely high-frequency (EHF) radio waves at the front and back of his body. The reflected energy produced an image interpreted by security. He was, of course, not carrying liquids, sharp objects, or anything that would trigger an alarm.

  However, as he was shifting down a corridor of polished steel and glass and following large yellow signs, he was accosted by two men in dark blue uniforms, along with the friendly check-in agent from the desk.

  “Is that him?” they asked her in English.

  “Oui.”

  The taller man said something to him that Ahmad did not fully understand, but a few words chilled him: U.S. Customs and Border Protection Immigration Advisory. One of the patches on the man’s uniform displayed the American flag.

  He took a step back and swallowed. American security here? His trainers had not anticipated this.

  Suddenly, he couldn’t breathe.

  They spoke to him again, more slowly, and the woman told him in French that he would have to go with the men.

  Ahmad gasped. And then, without thinking, without any forewarning at all, he ran. Straight ahead. Down the corridor. The men shouted after him. He didn’t look back.

  As he wove his way past travelers dragging suitcases on rollers or carefully balancing their coffee cups, he sloughed off his own backpack, which was weighing him down. He left the pack in his wake and broke into a full-on sprint.

  The men shouted again.

  He didn’t stop. He wouldn’t. He reached an intersection, ducked around the right corner, and an alarm began to blare inside the terminal and voices rattled through loudspeakers.

  A male French voice finally ordered all passengers to remain at their gates.

  Ahead lay a bank of glass doors, but beyond was a maintenance area with baggage trucks lined up in neat rows. The sign said something about restricted access. He didn’t care.

  Outside. He needed to get outside.

  But then he nearly ran head-on into an airport security officer. He tried to shift around the portly man, but the guy tackled him, and Ahmad dropped to the ground, his hands fumbling for and finding the man’s pistol. He got it, wrenched himself away, and fired two shots into the man’s chest. He sprang to his feet, and people screamed around him and cleared away, the shots still echoing, the Americans behind him hollering—and then a crackling like fireworks …

  Sharp, stabbing pain
woke in his back and drove him down to the tile once more. Suddenly, he was choking—on his own blood, he knew. He dropped, rolled onto his back, and envisioned himself dropping into the open arms of thousands of virgins. Allahu Akbar!

  They reached him and kept screaming, the Americans’ faces twisted into ugly masks, their weapons pointed at him, as the world grew dark around the edges.

  Jungle House

  Northwest of Bogotá, Colombia

  Samad wiped the sweat from his brow and turned away from the laptop computer screen, where he’d just watched an Al Jazeera video news report of the shooting at Paris–Charles de Gaulle.

  Of the fifteen Taliban who were coming to Colombia, each using a different route, only one had been caught—of course the youngest and most inexperienced. Ahmad Leghari had failed to realize that the Americans had no authority to arrest him in Paris. They were there only in an advisory capacity. His paperwork and passport were flawless. He would have been detained, questioned, and most likely released. Instead, he’d panicked. Still, the question remained of how he was identified. Again, the Americans were paying handsomely for tribesmen to spy on Taliban operations, and Samad had to assume that was what had happened. He could only sigh deeply and shake his head at Niazi and Talwar, both seated across from him and sipping on small bottles of Pepsi, since their barbaric host had no tea.

  As he took a pull on his own soda, Samad once more heard Mullah Omar Rahmani’s words ring in his head: “You will lead them. You will bring the jihad back to the United States—and you must use the contacts you’ve made with the Mexicans to do that. Do you understand?”

  Samad could only glare at the fat pig who entered the house with the unlit cigar dangling from his lips. If Juan Ramón Ballesteros had bathed in the last week, he would still need an attorney to prove it. He removed the cigar, stroked his silver beard, and said in Spanish, “I’ll help get you to Mexico, but the submarine will not be available.”