Drone

By bringing Navarro into the inner circle, Jackson was hoping to convince the brilliant young technician to stay in public service.

After Cesar Castillo’s death, all of the SD cards found in the drug lord’s safe had been downloaded and transcribed. Unfortunately for Navarro, he was the one who had done the downloading and transcribing. It was practically a snuff film marathon: torture, beheadings, gang rapes, people set on fire, and, on rare occasions, a simple gunshot to the head of Castillo’s enemies by Castillo himself with his favorite jewel-encrusted silver pistol. Navarro felt filthy after watching each of the tapes and numb after finishing the last transcription.

Ironically, the very first video he watched was Pearce’s crudely shot phone video of Castillo’s death by nerve agent. Navarro hated it. It was medieval to execute a human being like that. But after watching the snuff tapes, Navarro became angry. He wished that Castillo had suffered more than he had. In fact, he watched Castillo’s death one last time to cleanse his psychic palate before he wrote up his executive summary.

The single most important piece of intelligence Navarro gleaned from the viewing came from the footage of the Marinas, burned alive in the tunnel with napalm. It had been shot by two men speaking Farsi.

Coronado, California

Pearce drummed his fingers on his desk, thinking.

Cesar Castillo was dead and that was all that mattered to Early—and by extension, to his boss—but Pearce hated loose ends. His CIA career began in the Clandestine Service Trainee Program where he was trained to be a Core Collector, i.e., a disciplined intelligence case officer. He’d been taught to run down every clue, every source, every suspicion. On Pearce’s first day at the Farm, the instructor had passed out a sharp, flat-sided object to each student in the classroom. It was a nail, the kind used to shoe horses. Pearce had only seen them before in books.

“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost,” the instructor had said, and she recited the entire proverb in her thick New Jersey accent. “But maybe that’s too literal for you postmodern, chaos-theory types. So I’ll put it to you another way. You want to keep the tornado from blowing your house down? Then you better go find the friggin’ butterfly and tear its wings off before it starts flappin’.”

Pearce not only couldn’t find the butterfly, he didn’t even know what the butterfly was.

The Feds still hadn’t figured out who had posted the original El Paso video to Facebook that implicated the Castillo twins. Pearce couldn’t stop thinking about the mystery. The working theory that it was a teenage kid at the wrong place at the right time wasn’t making much sense to Pearce anymore. An amateur wouldn’t be able to hide from Fed hackers this long.

Just as troubling for Pearce was Castillo’s last phone call. Who was it made to? Obviously someone connected to the bunker line, which suggested that it was someone connected to Castillo’s security. That probably meant one of the four security guards Pearce had just killed. That would make the most sense. But why was the line scrambled? That seemed like overkill. Maybe an enthusiastic salesman had convinced the paranoid drug lord to add an extra layer of security to the only line of communication out of the bunker in the event of an emergency—after all, he would have been under assault, by definition, so secure communications would make sense. So why didn’t the other end pick up?

If the person on the other end had just had their brains blown out—like one of the four bodyguards whom Pearce had taken down—that would be a pretty good reason. And that probably was the actual reason.

But then again, Castillo’s phone was connected to a satellite uplink. Maybe he was reaching out to someone off the island. Someone with enough power or resources to rescue him. Who would that be? A corrupt general? A cop? A politician? And why didn’t that person pick up?

Could it have been an Iranian? Pearce had read Navarro’s report. Native Farsi speakers had shot the massacre video—whatever that meant. The Iranian security agencies weren’t operating in Latin America as far as he knew, though Hezbollah had made recent inroads. Mercs? Maybe, but highly unlikely. If anything, hired guns would have been on the island with Castillo, not offshore in strategic reserve.

Pearce’s options were limited. Ian was a brilliant IT analyst but even he had his limitations, and the Feds hadn’t solved the puzzle, either. There was one last hope. Pearce attached a couple of files to a secure e-mail expressing his concerns to Udi and Tamar and fired it off. They still had contacts in Mossad and the Israelis had the best hackers in the world.

Moscow, Russian Federation

President Titov was the one on the mat in a judo gi tossing his two-hundred- pound opponent around like a sack of potatoes, but Britnev was the one sweating. All he wanted right now was a cigarette, but the health-crazed president had forbidden smoking in the Kremlin. It would have been easier to smuggle in a missile launcher than a pack of Marlboros into the basement gym.

Britnev had conceived of the audacious plan that was now under way, and he was the point man in the field, so he was in the best position to observe things firsthand. It was only natural that he would be recalled to Moscow for a face-to-face meeting to discuss the latest developments with his boss, a famous micromanager and former KGB colonel.

“You’re certain about this?” Titov asked, his hands firmly gripping his opponent’s sleeve and collar. Titov was battling a thirty-year-old major in the Presidential Regiment of the FSB, the equivalent of the Russian secret service.

“I’m no metaphysician, Mr. President, but I’m as certain as one can be under the circumstances. In my opinion, the American invasion of Mexico can’t be too far off now.”

“Then we should move forward,” Titov said.

“There is still much to discuss,” Britnev said. He was a few years younger than Titov, but he didn’t feel like it as he watched his president manhandle the much-younger bull-necked security agent.

Titov grunted another kiai as he lifted the former Olympic judo champion up onto his hip, then flung him onto the mat in a lightning-quick throw. The major lay stunned on the mat for half a breath, but whether this was theatrics or not, Britnev wasn’t sure. Beating Titov in a judo match would be a career killer for the young agent, but Titov was truly in excellent shape. In either case, the major’s hesitation was just long enough for Titov to crash down on him and put him into a choking headlock. The Olympian pounded Titov’s back three times in submission and Titov released him. They both stood to their feet, faced each other, and bowed, ending the match. Titov laughed gregariously as he patted the major on his muscled back. “Maybe next time, Gregory.”

“Yes, sir. But I doubt it.” The major smiled sheepishly and strode away. He had the easy, loping gait of a world-class athlete. It seemed to Britnev that the younger man didn’t wear his humiliation well.

Titov picked up a folded towel from a bench and patted his sweating face with it as he approached Britnev, who noticed a slight limp in Titov’s stride.

“Let’s get some steam, Konstantin. I just had new eucalyptus panels installed. We’ll have a chance to talk further about this Mexico situation.”

Britnev forced a smile. “Thank you, Mr. President. I could use a good steam.” Inwardly, he sighed. It was going to be a long time before he got that cigarette.

27

Mexico City, Mexico

It was five in the morning when Hernan’s chauffeur pulled out past the tall, bougainvillea-covered walls of his palatial estate in Lomas de Chapultepec, but it was a long drive across town to Tlahuac, one of the most impoverished barrios of Mexico City, a semirural enclave of muddy streets and urban sprawl on the far eastern side of the nation’s capital.

Hernan’s armored Land Rover sped along past Carlos Slim’s mansion just down the street from his own home, but the multibillionaire had a much larger estate, befitting his unimaginable wealth. No one missed the irony that the world’s richest human being lived so close to millions of people living in squalor within the same city limits.