Miguel felt the tension pass into his shoulders, as though someone were fastening heavy leather belts around him and tightening them slowly, one hole at a time. “I’m not feeling so good.”
She pulled out of his grip to face him. She studied his eyes, placed her palm on his forehead, and stared at him with pouty lips, a sad little girl. “No fever.”
“It’s not that. Look at this.” He pulled the device from his hip pocket.
“A new phone?”
“It’s a digital voice recorder. I put it in my father’s office last night and I just went in there and got it out. He always makes a lot of calls in the mornings. You know, I’ve thought about doing it for years. He lied to me when we were down in the vault. He lied. I know it. And he doesn’t want me to know, because he’s afraid of what I’ll think of him.”
“Have you listened to it yet?”
“No. I’m afraid.”
She crossed over to the bedroom door and shut it. “It’s okay. You want me to be with you?”
“Yeah.”
They sat on the bed, and he took a deep breath. He hit the play button. Nothing.
“Is it broken?”
“No. And it worked. I know it did.”
“Maybe he found it.”
“Yeah, and if there was anything on there, he erased it, because he doesn’t want to confront me on this.”
“I’m sorry.”
Miguel’s breath quickened. “He has to be hiding something.”
Sonia made a face. “Your father’s not a drug dealer. You keep forgetting all he’s done for Mexico. If he has to deal with the drug cartels — you know, manipulate them, navigate around them — then you should understand that.”
“I don’t think he’s manipulating the drug cartels. I think he
“You’re not listening to me. My father has to do very similar things in his business. There are dealers and manufacturers that are always giving him trouble. Cyclists who take drugs and get busted for that, sponsorships that my father has to cancel. This is the world of business, and you should accept that sometimes things need to be done — because one day you’ll inherit much more than the money. You’ll inherit the commitment, and that, I’m sure, is what your father wants. Maybe he’s trying to protect you from the dirty side of things, but business nowadays is not clean. It’s not.”
“You talk a lot today.”
“Only because I care.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.”
“So what if you’re right? What if your father is the cartel? And then they arrest him. What will you do?”
“Kill myself.”
“That’s not the answer, you know that. You’d go on because you’re a much stronger man than you know.”
Miguel took the digital recorder, opened a dresser drawer, and tossed it inside. “I don’t know what I am.”
She rolled her eyes at his gloomy tone and remark, glanced away, then faced him once more. “So next week you’ll start your summer job at Banorte. That’ll get your mind off all this.”
He sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Oh, just do it. We’ll move together to California in the fall, and everything will be perfect.”
“Now you sound almost sad about that.”
Her lips tightened. “I’ll just miss my family.”
He pulled her into his chest. “We’ll visit them as much as we can …” Miguel’s phone vibrated. “That’s a text from the kitchen. J.C. says the eggs are getting cold. Are you hungry?”
“Not really.”
“Neither am I. Let’s leave now. We’ll get some coffee on the road. I don’t feel like looking at my father right now.”
Moore and Towers sat aboard the twin-engine jet, going over the PDF file that contained the floor plans of Rojas’s mansion in Cuernavaca. The home was nearly eight thousand square feet, comprising two stories with a multilevel garage, a full basement, and stonework to make it resemble a sixteenth-century storybook castle built on a hillside overlooking the town. The residence had been featured in a magazine article in which Rojas’s late wife, Sofia (whose name was uncannily similar to that of Sonia, their agent), had taken the editors on a grand tour of the home and accompanying gardens. She had dubbed the place La Casa de la Eterna Primavera.
The Agency had been surveying the house with human spotters since the perimeter was equipped with bug detection, and, in fact, Towers and Moore had a detailed report on the number of Rojas’s security personnel, their positions, and further analysis of the home’s electronic surveillance and security equipment. Rojas owned several security companies in Mexico and in the United States, so it was safe to assume he protected his home with the best that money could buy: hidden cameras that operated on backup power and whose software could be “trained” to set off alarms based on electronic analysis of “interesting” objects, such as the silhouettes of people, animals, or anything else you taught the system to detect. He also had motion and sound sensors, lasers, interior and exterior bug sweepers, all part of a virtual catalog of detection equipment monitored by a guard seated in a well-protected basement bunker. The article included photos of Rojas’s antique furniture and book collections, which the author stated were carefully protected within home vaults. Moore concluded that those vaults were located in the basement.
Towers had already picked out a rear sundeck on the second story in the southwest corner of the house. Perfect entry onto the second floor. He double-tapped on that spot on his iPad’s screen and placed a blue pushpin icon there.
“He’s got an exit here from the main driveway,” Moore said, pointing at the screen. “And if he gets desperate, he can come out through that ramp in the garage and try to crash through the brick wall here …and here …There’s this secondary garage here. He could have a vehicle waiting there.”
Towers looked at Moore. “If he gets outside, then we should both retire.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Don’t say. That won’t happen on my watch.”
Moore smiled. “So, you never told me …How’d you get permission to come?”
“I didn’t. They think I’m back in San Diego.”
“You’re shitting me.”
He grinned. “I am. I’ve got a good boss. And he respects what I do. I’ve never lost so many people on one operation. I’m going to see this through to the end. Slater backed me up, too. He didn’t want you going in alone. Apparently, they like you.”
“I’m shocked.”
Towers cocked a brow. “I was, too. And by the way, the list Gomez gave us checked out. He’s named ten key players within the Federales, plus the assistant attorney general, and the minute we’re through with this operation, I’m pulling the trigger on that one. I don’t care if we have to arrest the entire force in Juarez. They’re all going down.”
“I’m with you, boss. At least now we’ll get to work with some real hard-core operators. These FES guys are awesome, and they throw a great party. I’m pretty happy we got an invitation.”
Moore was being coy, of course. Slater had relied on his own contacts and Moore’s experience as a Navy SEAL to hire the Fuerzas Especiales (FES), a special-operations unit of the Mexican Navy that was established in late 2001. Moore thought of them as Mexico’s version of Navy SEALs, and he had indeed spent four weeks training with them at Coronado not long after the group was formed. Their motto was simple:
